


Unlikely

by Callmesalticidae



Series: Other Faces of Tom Riddle [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Swap, Dimension Travel, Gender or Sex Swap, Horcrux madness, Magic and Science, spacetime shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-01-26 00:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 20
Words: 26,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1667876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callmesalticidae/pseuds/Callmesalticidae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry is in Ravenclaw. Harry is in Hufflepuff. Voldemort is many, Riddle is triumphant. There are more worlds than one, my friend, more histories that could have been, and two of them are about to make a very unlikely collision. (double AU reacharound)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Girl Who Flipped Out

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Rectifier](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/83477) by Niger Aquila. 
  * Inspired by [insurgere](https://archiveofourown.org/works/400315) by [silverpard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverpard/pseuds/silverpard). 



> Okay... So here's how it's going. This... is definitely not my best work. I'm a little more than halfway through this and there are a number of things that are bugging the crap out of me. About the biggest one is that I underestimated chapter lengths in the outline, which made me cut out some material in places and still usually left me with longer chapters than were optimal (and definitely not chapters that were going to be consistent in length). It also left the chapters leaning more to the infodump-y side of things in some cases. I'd like to blame getting the stomach flu for this but... No (it may have made a few things worse, but it definitely isn't the sole reason for the stuff that's irritating me).
> 
> Unfortunately, I just don't have the energy to go back and give this thing a complete overhaul. I barely have what it takes to get through and finish this up, so I thought that what I'd do is put this before my loyal readers and leave it up to them. Read this through, tell yourself that this is about the level of the writing, give or take a star, and then tell me if you want to read another nineteen chapters. You've got till the 31st.

_April 6_ _th_ _, 1997_

"Shit."

Her eyes were open, but Harry wasn't really _seeing_. She wasn't comprehending. Her brain was receiving information of a visual nature but wasn't doing a blessed thing about it.

This was because her brain was a little more caught up in the waves of nausea rolling over her body. It was as if, any moment now, she was going to start vomiting. But that moment never came, not even long after she reached the point where sicking up would have been a mercy if only it could have relieved this feeling that had sunk into her bones.

"Harry?" someone said, and she suddenly became aware that they had been speaking to her for a couple of minutes now.

"Fine," she muttered. "Go to sleep." And then she paused, because she started to process something. She whipped her head in the direction of the voice. There was a figure her, around her age, with a lumos-litten wand. That was alright. That was as fine as she was pretending to be.

But it was a _boy_.

Her wand went out to match his, leveled on him in an Austrian halfway-grip stance. "You. What're you doing?" She gagged. "Here."

"Harry?"

Another male voice, this one from another direction. Harry spun out of her bed, executing a move that she had performed flawlessly a thousand times before for situations where she had been caught prone. It looked like the Headmaster had sent another nighttime ambush for her. And was this sickness the result of a potion slipped to her in her nightly pumpkin juice, meant to simulate a general physical disadvantage?

Well, it had been about time to take it up to the next level.

But all that practice had done her little good, it seemed, because she wound up flat on her face. Her timing or her movements had been just a hair off or something, and all she had to show for her practice was a dull ache in the arm that she had landed on.

She swore again, and then she really finally threw up.

"Sorry Headmaster," she muttered.

She turned over slowly. It was uncharacteristic for them to be giving her a breather like this but whether this was in the plans for tonight or they were too spineless to attack her, she was going to take the opportunity.

The first thing that she really _saw_ was all of the blue. It was a little hard to tell at first, but more students had woken up and flashed their wands on since she took her fall, and her eyes were starting to adjust.

That wasn't right. Blue. Not that there was anything wrong with it, she supposed, on some inherent level, but…

Well, okay, so she had been abducted. And placed here. Evidently given a potion or been enchanted or something of the sort, unless she had just simply had the bad luck to drink some spoiled milk or something the day before some unscheduled wit-sharpening exercises. And the other students, who were all talking amongst themselves, definitely sounded male to the last one of them.

So why had she been put in the Ravenclaw boys' dorm in her sleep? What kind of messy training experience was the Headmaster hoping to get out of this?

Sometimes she wondered if he was just messing with her half the time.

Harry stood, but the quick movement that she attempted was so awkward that she almost fell down again. She grabbed her bed with one hand for balance and pointed her wand at the nearest boy.

Sixth years, they looked like. Well alright then. But why was Boot here?

If the Headmaster wanted her disoriented then he had done a bang-up job.

"Professor Malfoy," she says as calmly as she can. "I want to talk to Professor Malfoy _right now_ , boys."

The idiots just stared at her.

"Get your head of house right now!" she shouted. She nearly fell again as she started to gag again. "I want to see Malfoy right this instant."

It was another moment before anybody responded, but then one of them— she didn't recognize him, but Harry didn't fraternize with the Ravenclaws very much so that was to be expected— slowly raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Head of house?" he said, almost as if he was unsure what she was saying. "We can do that. Come on, Harry."

She kept her wand leveled as they left the dorm, and she reflected on how, well, how _blue_ everything was. Even Hufflepuff didn't stick to its house colors so obstinately, but then again she didn't imagine that yellow had as many interesting shades to work with as blue evidently did.

It was a little hard to walk, as if all her proportions had been messed up. It just all felt so wrong. And in the back of her mind there was something that was tying it together, but she told it to shut up and keep its conclusions to itself. She didn't need to have any other eggshells thrown on her while she was still cleaning up the yolk from the last barrage.

But she had a bad feeling that she was going to develop an aversion to polyjuice as soon as she had a chance to check the equipment downstairs. She was also going to hold an extreme annoyance with the Headmaster. Harry would have thought some things off-limits. But that had probably been silly of her, she admitted to herself.

Harry dismissed the other student as soon as they came to Malfoy's door. She hoped that he wouldn't mind being woken in the middle of the night but dammit, she was going to make use of all the tools at her disposal and if he didn't like that then he could take it to the Headmaster.

The door opened as soon as she knocked and she half-walked, half-stumbled past the threshold into the professor's front room. "Professor Malfoy, s-sorry to wake you," she said as she shut the door behind her.

No reason to leave her back open.

"Not at all," he said sleepily from behind his bedroom door. He sounded strange for some reason, but she saw why as soon as the door opened. It wasn't Malfoy at all.

"Filius!" Well, that was a surprise. And by the look on his face, he was surprised too. Not that he didn't deserve to be. Harry doubted that he had expected to be woken at this time of night. "Is there something wrong with my Gringotts account?" She paused. "I-I mean, Professor Malfoy's? Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that I'm the only person you manage accounts…"

She shut up for a minute and looked him over.

He was wearing night clothes.

"Oh my _God_ ," she moaned. "I…" A look of horror struck her face. "N-not that there's anything wrong with that of course." She gave an awkward chuckle. "Just… I didn't need to know. Things students don't need to know about their professors, right? Ha ha…" She sunk to the ground and stared at her knees. "Oh my God, I'm never going to pass History of Magic again…"

She felt Filius' hand on her shoulder. "It's quite alright, my dear. I'm sure that… your History of Magic professor won't take this personally. In fact, I'm sure that he won't ever find out. Our little secret, alright?"

Harry looked up at him and took his proffered hand to stand again. "Thank you, Filius. They should really give you a raise. I'll… tell them I'll withdraw my account if they don't. Yeah."

The door opened again and she resisted the urge to turn so quickly that she would fall down again. Filius had her back enough that she could take it slowly.

She didn't recognize the sneering, beak-nosed man standing in the doorway.

"Professor Flitwick?" he said, after he had looked back and forth between her and Filius.

It took a second for the words to process but then she stared at Filius too. " _Professor_ Flitwick? But… Did you change jobs? But how did you…"

Filius hushed her as he guided her to a couch and helped her sit down.

"This is Headmaster Snape," he said. He looked amused at the scowl she adopted at the title. He looked at the man. "It seems that I am an employee of Gringotts in another universe."

"Indeed?"

"Can you do anything but ask questions?" Harry said.

"If I were to say that Severus Snape was the Headmaster of Hogwarts," said Filius, "that I was the Charms Professor and had been since before you were born, and that there had never been a Professor Malfoy, of History of Magic or any other class, since 1756, you would not think that this was business as usual. Am I correct?"

She nodded, and Filius continued. "We can give you a more detailed explanation later, complete with diagrams, but imagine for the moment that there were a vast number of worlds, some similar to each other and others very different. A world where I was Charms Professor, and another where I… work for Gringotts, it seems." He still looked incredibly amused at the prospect, and his casual delight was a little infectious and calming for Harry.

"And I somehow went from one to the other?" It was all horribly outside of her experience, but she could connect dots quickly enough and it was at least as plausible as any other explanation that presented itself.

"Our Harry was working on a method to pluck information from doubles like you that lived in other worlds. I don't know what's happening in your world but we're fighting a war over here, and he was looking for worlds where that war had been won so that we could apply their experiences to our situation. Instead of learning what you knew, it looks like your minds were switched. Or…" He paused, and looked troubled. "Or that your mind totally overwrote his and that, rather than inhabiting your body in the other universe, he's as good as dead."

"He?" she questioned.

"He," Filius confirmed. "You're not, I take it."

"Oh." She shook her head and resisted the urge to confirm the revelation. "Well," she said a beat later. "How do we fix this?"

"We're not sure," Filius said. "Our Harry didn't share all of his research with us. We'll need to go over his notes to figure out where he was before we can discover what went wrong. We can conduct some tests to try to how the process affected you to begin with— that is, if our Harry still exists— and go from there."

Harry let this wash over her. "Okay. I can handle that. I hope that there was a switch," she said. "Not just because, you know, I hope that I didn't kill your Harry. But if he's in my world then there's probably a conversation like this one happening over there, and that's probably the best thing that we could have going for us. I mean, I don't want to insult you, but… Headmaster Riddle, he's probably the greatest sorcerer in _any_ world."

Filius and Snape looked like somebody had killed their cerberus.

"What's wrong?"


	2. Awakening & Rude Shocks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry, of Ravenclaw House, finds himself not where he belongs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't expecting such fast response, honestly. In light of that, I'm sending out chapter two a little bit early. On the other hand I still have an overall schedule to keep to; while updates will ordinarily be every week chapter three will be an exception, updating two weeks from now instead. 
> 
> And now, without further ado, I do present to you, lords and ladies, the power and ruler of Britain, Headmaster Riddle...

_April 6_ _th_ _, 1997_

Harry concentrated on steadying his breathing first of all. Occlumency was as much magic as it was technique, but like one could make a passable exercise routine out of dueling practice, so too were there some non-magical applications for occlumency.

He wasn't where he should be, which was… anywhere but here. The dorm was all yellow and brown and, well, it was the girl's dorm. And he was a girl himself. That had been a shock, but it had been tabled in favor of running down an analysis.

His experiment had obviously gotten results.

Said results were not what he expected.

He could infer that rather than copy and pluck knowledge in a tidy packet like he had wanted, the whole mind had been taken. And then his had been forced out, maybe, because a brain only had room enough for one mind. And it ended up in the vacated body or something?

He didn't know. That would be an interesting problem to sort out later. What mattered was that he wasn't dead, which meant that he still had a chance of fixing this. And, if Harry was going to be honest with himself, his double— his  _female_  double, he noted again in astonishment— was doing better in his place than he had. As far as he could tell the spell hadn't failed so much as it had worked too well and grabbed her whole mind, so there wasn't any reason to doubt that his body was currently being ridden by someone with prior experience in killing Voldemorts.

Which meant that he needed to focus on what was happening here. It wouldn't do to cause a panic, and if he were found out before he could figure out how to handle the situation then the other Harry's friends might assume the worst and take him to be a Polyjuice impersonator or something more heinous.

Luckily, Headmaster Snape— and Dumbledore before him— had given Harry instruction in legilimency. If he played it safe then he could take reads on expected behavior and figure out an excuse— sickness, he thought, but nothing so serious as to warrant a trip to Pomfrey or whoever was in her place here— for why he was more distant than people here would expected.

Or maybe he'd be lucky and his double was an introvert.

Lights started going on as the morning broke and students began waking up.

"Good morning, Harry!" someone yelled at him from a few beds down, a black-haired girl that he didn't recognize.  _She_  certainly wasn't shy.

Harry nodded weakly, playing at a hint of nausea. He caught eye contact with her briefly before turning away and learned that her name was Fay Dunbar. And that Hogwarts apparently didn't train in the Mind Arts. That had been a risk he needed to take, but by the shape of her mind it didn't seem as if she had even heard of such things.

Or that she was the greatest Occlumens that Harry had ever met, but after he was dressed he made quick eye contact with a couple of other girls on his way to the Great Hall and got the same results. The possibility had been absurd, but it was comforting to have confirmation.

All warm feelings fled out of him when he entered the Great Hall, however, and he forced himself to keep walking to his table. Deliberately, but in what he hoped was not at all a suspicious manner, he refrained from looking in the direction of the staff.

He trained his eyes instead on the food in front of him, as bountiful as it was back home, and that seemed to be doing him fine until he bit into a croissant and found a slip of parchment tucked inside.

_My dear young friend,_

_I would be remiss in my duties if there were an empty seat in your uncle's class after breakfast, but there appears to be a free period thereafter. Make yourself present in my office at that time._

_Your thoughts are the only password you will need, as always._

_T. M. Riddle_ , it signed off with a flourish.

Her uncle? She had an uncle here?

Still, unexpected family relations notwithstanding, this wasn't good. Voldemort hadn't been killed, he'd  _won_  here. And early on, by the looks of it. He still appeared perfectly human, if clad in as many scars as Harry remembered from old photos of Mad-Eye Moody.

He ditched breakfast soon after that and avoided whatever unknown class had been scheduled for him. Wandering the halls seemed safer than frantically legilimizing a family relation every five seconds to avoid letting his identity slip.

Nobody seemed to pay attention to the sixteen-year-old girl making her way in this direction, or that one, but  _purposefully_ , and Harry felt that maybe he could figure something out. Explain away his absence with the sickness he'd been faking this morning. He was sure that he couldn't stand up to the mental assault of any universe's Voldemort and it was possible that Voldemort had already caught a whiff of something.

As his thoughts dwelled ever more on the encroaching meeting, the halls slowly became hazy. Like viewing through a cloudy glass, his surroundings took on a warped appearance. A door appeared before him, in front of him no matter where he turned.

"Your thoughts are the only password you will need," Harry whispered to himself. He didn't know what enchantment or spell of the wards this was, but he caught on to its effect and tried, desperately, to think of anything but Voldemort and his office and their meeting.

The door continued to develop clarity and then it opened up to reveal Voldemort standing behind his desk. He was a little bit taller than Harry remembered from pensieve memories, but there could have been any number of reasons for that. It was almost as if he had been stretched out an inch, too little to look very different but just enough to appear, in all his details, just slightly wrong.

His hands were held together, slightly-too-long fingers wrapped around each other. His mouth was open, a toothsome smile that was almost too sharp.

Suddenly Harry realized that he was not outside the office, looking through the door, but inside it, sitting in the chair opposite Voldemort.

And it was  _so_   _cold_.

"Good morning, Nymphadora. Hot chocolate?" Voldemort raised a mug and gave a smile as sharp as a razor.

Harry focused on the mug. "Yes. That would be perfect." He held it in both of his hands but, as nonchalantly as he thought he could make the action look, did not drink. There was no telling what Voldemort had put in it. "Thank you, Headmaster Riddle."

And why was Voldemort using that name? Hadn't he hated it? Or was "Headmaster Voldemort" simply too strange for even him?

Harry had turned his eyes to examine the many books all around the office in an attempt to look at anything but Voldemort. Gradually, though, he noticed that there was silence in the room, and with trepidation he turned his gaze back to face Voldemort.

"You did not call me Tom," he said.

Harry's mouth fell open. "I…"

Something predatory flashed across Voldemort's face. "What have you done with my student?"

"I beg your pardon?" Harry replied. The words started to spill out. "Look, I-I'm sick, I'm sorry, it's just not a very good day for me Tom, I mean, I feel like I'm going to throw up all over the place and I tried some potions and it didn't help me any—"

Voldemort cut him off with a  _silencio_. "I am very familiar with Miss Harriett Potter. How she moves when she is lying. Or how her voice hitches just so when she is nervous, as you are right now. But most of all," he snarled, "and in no small part because of these  _replacement games_  that she likes to play when Nymphadora visits Hogwarts, I am familiar with the difference between the real thing and an imposter unfamiliar with her body and how it moves. She is more graceful than you."

Harry swallowed. Tried to say something, then realized that he couldn't.

"You appear unwilling to talk right now." Voldemort sneered. "So we will adjourn for now, and reunite when I have decided to make you beg to answer my questions."

As if his body was no longer under his control, and it likely wasn't at the moment, Harry left his seat and walked away.

"Oh, and my fine, thieving friend?"

Harry stopped.

"Don't think that the wards will let you pass the walls of this castle again, even if you find one of its innumerable secret passages."


	3. The Girl Who Exchanged Stories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Huffleharry, Snape, and Flitwick learn a little about each other's worlds.

_April 6_ _th_ _, 1997_

The Headmaster's office in this world was utterly unlike the one with which Harry was familiar with. Too many spinning instruments and color-shifting liquids in suspended bottles. She said as much to Snape and Filius, for which she was rewarded with a sneer and a smirk, respectively.

"Merlin forbid that my office suit my interests and not model its décor after the inclinations, whatever those may be, of an unknown figure from some other world," Snape replied.

"It's warmer, at least," Harry said.

"Excuse me?"

"The Headmaster's office is really chilly. I didn't know that it could be any other way.  _Hogwarts, A History_  never mentioned." She yawned. "Before we talk about anything else, can we agree that I can sleep somewhere else? Than the boys' dorm in Ravenclaw, I mean."

Snape looked at her.

Something pinged against her skull, or itched, or bore through the bone like an ossuary mole, and Harry turned away. "I'll give you this one warning because the Headmaster does the same thing to me all the time, so maybe it's tradition or something like that, but you're not my Headmaster and you don't have permission to crack open my mind." Her hand curled around her wand.

Snape's expression turned to an appraising one. "Your occlumency is… passable. Can you perform legilimency yourself?"

Harry shook her head.

"Why not?"

"The Headmaster says that it's not time for me to learn yet."

"Did he say you're too young?" Filius probed.

"No. Only that it's not time."

"Why?"

" _Because_ ," she replied, and she faced Filius head-on. "And what about you?"

"Mediocre occlumens, and never a legilimens."

"Huh. Charms Professor, right?" She wondered what he thought of the look that she gave him then. It was just so  _weird_.

"The Mind Arts are more than just extracurricular in our world."

"Mine too," she replied. "But the Headmaster wants me to learn many things."

"Are you familiar with the name Voldemort?" Snape suddenly asked her.

Harry touched a hand to her chin. "No." She paused. "French?"

"The name is a French bastardization, but the wizard is native."

She thought about that for a second. " _The_ wizard. He named himself?"

"Yes. A Dark Lord, the first that Britain has grown for a very long time. Harry," Snape said, suddenly changing the topic. "What do you think of the muggle threat?"

Filius looked at the man strangely, and so did Harry.

"Um… What threat?"

"The threat that the muggles pose to our people, from body to culture," he explained.

She bit her lip and reached for her wand again as casually as she could manage. "I think that it might be best if we didn't discuss… Damn, this isn't even politics. I'm sorry, pure— pure  _stupidity_. I suppose that we should get rid of the Scottish wizards, too, just so long as we're keeping ourselves pure. Mugggles are as likely to be saboteurs as a wizard is, and if they are then with better reason. A determined witch could kill muggles by the block if she wanted."

"Saboteurs…" Snape repeated, apparently speaking to himself. As if the word didn't make sense in the context it had been put in.

Ah ha. "You're in a different kind of world, aren't you?" Harry asked.

"Where there are divisions that yours lacks," Snape completed.

"How… What is it like?" She swallowed. "Aparthood, I mean."

"Aparthood…" Snape was visibly perplexed, then understanding dawned on his face. "No such thing. Did you ever hear of the Statute of Secrecy?"

She blinked. "In history books."

"Interesting," Snape said.

" _Fascinating_ ," Filius differed.

"You must understand that it's different in our world."

"Okay. But I… don't like—"

"Don't worry about it," Snape said. "I couldn't know where you stood on purity customs, and I didn't want to risk tainting your answer." He pressed his fingers together as if to form a tent. "If you supported my feelings as stated then either it was genuine or you were willing to say whatever you had to in order to ingratiate yourself with me. Either would have been unacceptable."

"Apology accepted."

It was Snape's turn to blink, but he took it without further comment. "The difference in our world is that the Statute is still in effect. Lord Voldemort, as he styles himself, supports the old purity customs, although it would be more accurate to say that he supports whatever is popular among those that could be his allies. He is a half-blood himself."

"And he's a Dark Lord," she repeated for confirmation. She looked as though the idea were distasteful to her.

"With horrifying consequences," Snape verified. "I am sure that no-one, at least in our world, has ever gone so far in the pursuit of power and immortality. There is a ritual, a grotesque ritual, allows one to split his soul and embody it within a chosen vessel. So long as the vessel is intact, a fragment of the wizard's soul is protected and so he will remain, in some form, alive."

The nausea was beginning to return. "We have horcruxes in my world too. The Headmaster made sure to teach me about them. But they're… in the past."

Snape and Filius shared a look. "I hope that you are correct," Snape responded. "What sets Lord Voldemort apart from the rest is how far he delved into the crafting of horcruxes, however. Not content with one, or two, or ten, he made dozens. In fact, we thought that he had destroyed himself one night when he discovered, quite to his detriment, that there was a limit to how far you could split the soul until, rather than splitting, it simply dissolved."

"Like an atom of the soul?"

"Atom?" Filius questioned, but Snape simply gave her another appraising look.

"Does Hogwarts teach of such things, or is that another extracurricular class?" he inquired.

"Neither." Harry smirked. "They introduce you to atoms before you enter Hogwarts."

"Interesting. But you're correct in your comparison. And this would have been the end of our story except that these horcruxes remained, and about five years ago one of them was found and triggered. It went on to trigger others under the correct assumption that by dividing our resources we would less likely to defeat it specifically, and we now have many suitable doubles for the Dark Lord. Some date from his late teenage years or twenties and others are… very recent. Some of the triggered horcruxes have begun to divide themselves again, taking care to not reach the limits that their original discovered."

"That sounds bad."

"So you understand the threat that our Harry was attempting to combat."

"If this is as bad as it sounds then…" She bit her lip. "Okay. I need to requisition some supplies. Can I have a pen— er, quill?"

Snape made a gesture with his wand. "The room will record you."

Harry wondered if it had been doing that to begin with. "Okay. I'm going to need high-voltage wire— don't worry if I have to explain some of these terms. PVC pipe— plastic pipe, I mean, you know what plastic is, right?— and something for insulation, some adhesive… double-sided copper sheets—"

"Pardon me," Snape interrupted, "but are you looking to build a stun baton?"

"Long cylinder thing that buzzes you?" Harry asked, stretching her hands apart to mimic its length.

"Yes."

"We call them electric wands. I didn't expect that you'd have them. They're a blue science thing."

"You'll have to explain that!" Filius exclaimed. "Maybe when your stun bat is on, so you can explain it to us with a live example."

"Baton," Snape corrected.

"Oh. Just like a regular baton?"

"Even so. Now Harry," Snape said, returning his attention to her, "we need to have a cover story for you."

"Deep cover mission," she said immediately. "Can't be contacted."

"While that could work," Snape said slowly, "I was thinking that you could say that you're experimenting with a new kind of wit-sharpening potion, one that, most unfortunately, damaged your memories. It's only temporary, of course, and memories are coming back all the time."

"Why not go with something simpler? Like, you know, sending me on a deep cover mission? It would give me more time to help you figure out what happened to my counterpart."

"It would be good to keep you in the public eye, perhaps even making some of our enemies decide that you're impaired at the moment, but besides that we have to explain the incident of just a couple of hours ago in the dorms."

"Right," she muttered. "I was hoping that we could just forget about that. Not my most graceful episode." She groaned. "I'm going to have to get used to a new body and everything. Do you know how much retraining I'll have to go through just to get back to where I was? And on top of that you're going to have to school me on my counterpart's life so that I'm not clueless about  _all_  of it."

"Do you think that you can do it?"

Harry stood and raised her hand in a proud salute. "Aye, captain. Harriett Petunia Potter, reporting for duty."

Snape looked like he was going to vomit. " _Petunia_?"


	4. Deals & Special Glasses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A confrontation with Headmaster Riddle.

_April 9 th, 1997_

The portraits were following him. Harry was sure of it now.

And so was Padma Patil, but that was almost normal.

“What’s Crocker’s Law again?” she asked, leaning over the railing on a stairway to look at a troop of students passing below.

“Er…” He looked around wildly and made eye contact with a Ravenclaw coming up the stairs. “The complexity of a magic…” And then it was gone. “I… Look, I’m not feeling well.” He looked at Padma, who seemed to be barely paying any attention to him in the first place. “It must be whatever I was sick with a few days ago.”

“Yeah, yeah. Hey, come on, we’ve got classes with Slughorn don’t we?” She grinned and passed Harry on the way up. “Say, how many students were in his old Slug Club last year, do you think?”

Almost. Almost normal.

But he couldn’t read her mind, and that was definitely not normal.

“You talk a lot, Padma,” Harry observed.

“Th-thanks!” she said, her voice skipping as she almost tripped and went backwards down the stairs. She laughed.

Harry followed her. “In fact, if I didn’t know you better, I wouldn’t be disturbed by all of these questions at all. I might not think much of how clumsy you are, either.”

“I guess it’s a good thing that you’re stupid, right?” Padma laughed again.

“Give me some credit,” he whispered as a couple of Third-Years went by. “I didn’t know Padma from Merlin when you took her place. But I think that it’s time that we went somewhere private to talk.”

“Ooh, don’t you think that we’re moving awfully fast, Harry? I mean, we only just met.” Not-Padma’s face lit up. “Now, that Tonks, she’s the duck’s quack, but that would be pretty awkward if you were really Harry Potter.”

“I _am_ Harry—” He frowned.

“You’re pretty clumsy yourself,” she said. “Not used to that body either, are you?” She smiled slyly, and then looked side to side. “C’mon,” she said.

Harry followed her down an empty hall. His hand went to his wand when she drew hers but she only cast a spell on herself. For a moment her clothes were suddenly all too big and wrongly-proportioned for her but then her body began to shift here and there, gaining another two inches, her hair turning pink…

She was definitely too old to be a Hogwarts student.

“Wotcher, Weird Harry,” she said when she was done.

“Nymphadora Tonks, I presume.”

“ _Tonks_. Just Tonks.”

Harry smiled. “But the Headmaster—”

“Is the most powerful wizard in Britain, and anyway I call him Tom so we’re even.”

The hall began to turn and fade and blur while other portraits came in or went out of sight. It was a little less disturbing now that Harry had already experienced it once before.

“So other people…”

“Don’t. Either of us.”

The Headmaster’s door appeared in front of them.

“But he likes some fight in his protégés.” Tonks’ smile reminded him, just barely, of Voldemort’s.

“I wouldn’t have expected that.”

Slowly, it began to open.

“Oh, if we’re broken we’re no good, are we? Trolls can smash if that’s all you want. But ‘Puffs, he can  trust us.”

And then Harry was suddenly aware of the cold that he was sure hadn’t been there before, and the two of them were sitting in chairs across from Voldemort.

“Wait,” Harry said, realizing something else she had said. “ _Protégés?_ ”

“Good afternoon, Nymphadora,” Voldemort said slowly. “Hot chocolate?”

“ _Please_. It’s bloody cold here,” she said, shivering. “Dark chocolate, Tom. And five marshmallows, the kind that’s a little bigger than the small ones but not as big as the big ones, and a little stick of—”

The mug appeared in one of her hands as she was still talking and she paused to examine it. “Six marshmallows, this is. And no cinnamon. You know I was going to ask for cinnamon.”

“You’ll have to speak with the house elves,” Voldemort said, and then he turned to Harry. “How many Senators reign in Ziz?”

“Er…”

“After what debacle was the Order of the Knights of Merlin revived?”

“ _What?_ ”

“Which of the twelve Prodigal States in the United States refused to return to the Union even after the reforms of 1965?”

Harry couldn’t say anything anymore.

“Hot chocolate?” offered Tonks.

“N-no. No thanks,” Harry said.

Voldemort leaned back in his chair. “You should be pleased to know that I don’t think that you’re a threat anymore. You’re probably responsible for Harry’s disappearance, but I don’t think that it was on purpose. You don’t appear stupid enough to have intentionally taken her place without having done even _basic_ research.”

There was silence for what seemed to Harry to drag on forever.

“Excuse me?” He finally said.

“A few days ago,” Voldemort said, “a most curious change came upon one of my students. She developed a scatter-brained sense of modern history, one that always failed her whenever the only people around to make eye contact with all knew occlumency. Case in point, you couldn’t answer three elementary questions that any Fourth-Year could have gotten right. And your understanding of blue science your first day here was on the level of a six-year-old. No,” he corrected himself. “A six-year-old wouldn’t have said ‘Huh?’ as if she’d never heard those two words put together to make a single phrase.”

Harry looked at Tonks, then back at Voldemort. “So I’m an idiot imposter, is what you’re saying?”

“I would be very confused,” Voldemort confessed, “except that you’ve been studying very interesting books. Books that have to with very peculiar theories.”

“We know that you’re from another universe,” Tonks said. There was another mug of chocolate sitting in her lap. “Whoever figured out how to get you over here must have been pretty smart.”

“That was me, actually,” he said, forgetting who else was in the room for a second.

She grinned and lifted the mug to her lips. “Sexy.” She sighed a little as she drank. “So how old are you, really?”

“Sixteen.”

“Sixt… You _are_ Harry Potter, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“But all of those things that you don’t know, that you should know, they’re generations old! Th-the point of divergence should be so far back, there shouldn’t be a Harry Potter at all in your universe.”

“It’s very unlikely, isn’t it?” Voldemort said. He frowned. “But it’s still possible.”

“I was looking for a world within a certain set of parameters. Which included Harry Potter.”

“Ms. Potter—” Voldemort began.

“Mister, actually,” Harry corrected, and then he gasped a little. He hadn’t meant to interrupt the darkest wizard in a century. It had just been kind of automatic.

“What?”

“Mister. Mister Potter.”

Voldemort blinked. Tonks drank from her mug again.

“ _Mister_ Potter, I would be willing to help you, if you would be willing to help us in turn.”

“With… what?” he asked. It couldn’t be good. It really just couldn’t be. But maybe it wouldn’t be _too_ bad, and he could justify it to himself. Just maybe.

“Since you came into my office just now, every book tangentially related to your problem has been confiscated from the Library.”

Harry scowled at that.

“I also have a list of books that were never in the Library to begin with, that have been either ordered or at least located since this morning, which will be useful to you. It also occurs to me that you could use an immense amount of resources, such as those which the Headmaster of Hogwarts might be able to bring to bear for you. For experiments, to give an example. This is what I am offering you. And more, if you need it.”

“In exchange for what?” Harry asked, averting his gaze.

This was it. This was the moment where it turned out to be too much.

“After Grindelwald died and his territory fragmented, the tools of his power, some of the greatest magical artifacts known to history, were similarly divided. One of them, his ring, fell into the hands of the Eternal Kaiser. Another, a cloak of his, belongs to the Emperor-at-Milan. But the third, a terrible weapon, fell into the mists again. But I think that I have picked up its trail.”

Harry frowned. “And you want this weapon, I suppose.”

“Not for myself. It belongs to Grindelwald’s heir by right. But for the time being, the best thing to do would be to keep it locked away until his heir can come for it.”

Harry looked at Tonks, looking around and humming cheerily to herself. He looked at his feet. At Tonks again. At her hot chocolate.

She had to be barking _mad_. She was so calm here. She was even being _playful_ with Voldemort.

Had she been dropped on her head as a child? Repeatedly, maybe?

“Sure,” Harry finally said. “But the moment that I find out that you haven’t been giving me full disclosure about what’s going on, we’re through.”

“Agreeable.”

“And we block your legilimency,” he continued, “so that I can finally look at you properly. I can teach you how to make the right devices.”

“Don’t need to, Harry. We anticipated that you’d feel that way,” Tonks said, and she leaned over and retrieved a tiny box. She handed it over to Harry, who opened it. There was a small set of spectacles inside. Solid yellow spectacles, from the frame to the glass.

“Are these…?”

Tonks nodded. “Yep.”


	5. The Girl Who Spoke Science

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is taking a little while until we get to explosions and stuff. Yeah... So if that's what you're here for, explosions and whatever, then I apologize.

_April 9 th, 1997_

Harry looked down both ends of the hallway twice before she turned to speak to the portrait in front of her. “Gurdyroot extract till green, stir till orange, seven wiggentree twigs, simmer till pink,” she repeated. The gangly, bespectacled man in the portrait took a moment to consult the paper in his hands, and then the portrait and its frame slid away to reveal a tunnel that sloped gently upward.

It was not at all the path to the Headmaster’s office as she was familiar with it, but everyone had their different tastes, she supposed.

Snape was nearly entirely hidden behind the stacks of paper on his desk. Many things may have changed from her world to this, but the ceaseless onrush of paperwork didn’t seem to be one of them.

“The portraits sent word that you had called for me.”

He was silent for another minute, until he signed the document he was looking at and set it at the top of a stack that was, she was sure both of them felt, not nearly tall enough. The corners of his mouth curved, barely, and then the motion was gone like sand blown away in the wind.

“Your stun baton has arrived, Miss Potter,” Snape said, and she noted that he was continuing to use the more formal term of address as he had ever since she had gone to a private room to sleep. Evidently, he had thought it improper to be familiar with a girl that he had known for only a few days, even if she possessed the body of someone that he was much closer to. Or perhaps even because of it.

Perhaps the appellation “Miss” served to remind him that she was not who her face declared her to be.

“Thank you, sir.” Harry, for her part, had decided to be formal as well if that was what he wished. She still refused to call him her Headmaster, however, but Snape appeared to be content with “Professor” and “sir.” Perhaps it was too much speculation to make on such limited interaction, but she wasn’t sure that he liked the title as it was.

The box appeared in her lap with a jab of his wand. She held its sides thoughtfully. “I wish that I could have made my own, but it’ll probably be more reliable than something of my own make. After all, I pretty much just have an idea of the basic principles involved.”

“Yes. The principles. You mentioned something called ‘blue science,’ did you not? While I’m sure that Filius will regret not being present for it, would you be able to explain to me what that is?”

“Blue science came after Grindelwald’s war unified the worlds,” Harry explained, and Snape nodded in response. The war, and the turns it had taken in her world, had apparently proven capable of animating even the venerable— intangible— Professor Binns, and at least some of the specifics had evidently been passed on to Snape. “Electric technology isn’t wholly incompatible with magic. It’s really sensitive, though, like…” She thought about how to explain it. “Like channeling too much water through a pipe too small.”

“Or too much electricity through a channel,” Snape said. “I knew what a stun baton was. I know how electricity works.”

“Right,” she replied sheepishly. “But that’s Ekayanayake’s Third Law: ‘Any sufficiently advanced spell can be integrated with electric technology.’ Sort of… because magic is similar to electricity in some way. I guess? That’s how it was explained to me. Anyway, it’s a problem of how you apply the magic, and the more advanced the technology the more sensitive it is, but in theory there’s no upper limit to integration, and so you get blue science.”

“Which is the art of fusing these two disciplines.”

“Exactly.”

“What do you plan on doing with your stun baton?” Snape asked. “Or electric wand, as you called it.”

“Hogwarts’ wards here wouldn’t have been adapted for blue science, so the first thing that I need to do is craft some general protections for it. Then I’ll have to design some pathways to channel my magic through it without burning it out. But then, so long as I can make physical contact, the combination of magic and electricity can enhance the power of whatever spell I choose to cast. So long as it’s not too powerful, anyway. I’m not the best at layering these enchantments.”

“While I am not averse to giving you means to defend yourself with which you are familiar, you know, do you not, that we will not be _intentionally_ putting you in situations where that is necessary?”

“Professor Snape. _Sir_ ,” she added after some thought. “I do not think that you understand. I am Harry Potter. The equipment between my legs is a little strange to me at the moment, but I am a daughter of Britain. And when I have gone from Hogwarts’ blessed halls it will be to vow the vows of a knight of Merlin’s order. Bound to the lands of Britain, and the government thereof, and the people thereof, and shame on him who thinks evil of it.”

She set the box in her hands aside and stood. “Bound and _bound_ to protect these things, and if I shirk the vows here and now then how can I be trusted to ever hold true to them?”

“But this isn’t your world.”

“I can recite the vows for you line by line, Professor Snape, but not a single one makes any distinction between ‘my’ Britain and ‘your’ Britain,’ but they all declare my obligations to Britain only. Yours, mine, and every Britain, wherever the sun’s light may fall on her.”

Snape’s expression was unreadable.

“I can admire your display,” he finally said. “And I would do well to remember that our worlds have no small number of differences.” He looked at his paperwork. “I do not think that my paperwork would complain if it was left to itself for now, and you demonstrated your abilities. We will determine your role in our war from there.”

“I can accept that.”


	6. Politicking & Memories

_April 11 th, 1997_

The Palace of Milan was unlike anything that Harry had ever seen before. Reds and whites swirled together with the staircases in a way that hearkened back to Hogwarts, for all that they were totally stationary. The ceiling seemed to twist in on itself, and at times it seemed that he was looking at something from entirely the wrong point of view, from above when it should be from the side, or that things were much closer or further than they had appeared to be only moments before.

He remembered reading in someone’s mind, just a trace fact in response to a question from Professor Malfoy, that it had been so designed with defense in mind.

“The Palazzo Reale has its origins in the Dark Ages of Muggledom but came to be renovated and expanded over the centuries,” Voldemort explained to him as they walked through the halls. “At certain points in its history it even served as a fortress, and after the World Wizarding War it came to serve as a fortified seat of government again.”

He made a show of not looking at Harry too much, apparently to further put Harry at ease about his legilimency. The glasses that he now wore were a design known to Harry’s world as well, but they were generally regarded as a supremely useless invention for they could do nothing to protect the wearer from legilimency. They only prevented the wearer from using it, which was useless outside of unique situations such as these.

“After Grindelwald’s regrettable death— this was 1951, in case you never stole that date from anyone’s mind— the Empire fragmented, becoming those states which we refer to colloquially as Behemoth, Leviathan, and Ziz. The _rightful_ heir to Grindelwald’s throne, Erardo Pizzimenti, took over the Palazzo Reale as his new seat in the face of the North’s defection and assumed the title ‘Emperor-at-Milan,’ and to make the place suitable for its newly-heightened stature he hired the architect Maurits Escher, a Muggle Dutchman by birth but Italian by marriage.”

 “And this, Harry,” Voldemort said, gesturing to a sprightly man coming toward them, “is the Duke-Governor of Florence, Osvaldo Lazzara.” Voldemort gave a small bow, which was returned to him but with a deeper bend.

“Our gratitude to Hogwarts and the House of Windsor for your coming,” Osvaldo said.

“Nonsense,” Voldemort said. “Britain may be a free state, but what imperils her allies likewise imperils her borders. And if we are to be honest with each other,” he continued, pausing to confirm that the hall was empty, “if Britain is truly free then I am a dog. And dogs must come when the master calls, no?”

And if Voldemort was a lapdog then Harry was a rabbit.

“Osvaldo is one of our staunchest supporters in the Chamber of Duke-Governors. He and his friends keep a symbiotic coexistence from becoming an abusive relationship.”

“I wouldn’t be there to do it if Hogwarts and her Queen hadn’t supported me first.”

“No,” Voldemort agreed. He turned to Harry. “The Duke-Governor of Florence is set to succeed the Emperor-at-Milan, by law. It helps us greatly that both the Emperor and his successor are our friends.”

“It is almost time for us to be present,” Osvaldo said. “My apologies for not acknowledging you sooner, Miss Potter,” he added, and then he bowed for Harry. “This way.”

 In the room that they entered there were eleven people seated around the curved side of a half-moon table, with seats for Harry, Voldemort, and Osvaldo, and on the other side sat the Emperor-at-Milan. He was a bald, hatchet-faced manwith beady, brown eyes. His advisers were a diverse mixture of Italians, Spaniards, French, and others, and wizards and witches and even a Muggle, according to Voldemort. Most, but not all, were Duke-Governors.

Osvaldo and Voldemort made obeisance to the Emperor, casting their eyes to the floor as they did so, and Harry followed their example.

“I am pleased that the envoy of Her Majesty Elizabeth could make it here,” the Emperor said. His voice was like molten brass. “Behemoth is going to war.”

“And we are going to meet them.” Voldemort took a seat, and Harry sat beside him.

“It is my understanding that you had prepared for this eventuality.”

“As you say.” He smiled, which made an ethereal sight when paired with his yellow glasses.

The details of the meeting were lost on Harry, but he understood some of the consequences. Voldemort had been given special dispensation to do and requisition whatever was necessary to stop the impending war or, if it could not be stopped, ensure that it ended in failure for Behemoth.

“The war can’t be stopped,” Voldemort told him after they had returned to his office at Hogwarts. “I don’t want it to, anyway. I would have started one myself if it had come to that.”

Of course he would have. What Voldemort said next, though, Harry hadn’t expected.

“Leviathan needs this war. Britain needs it. And truth be told, Behemoth needs it as well.”

“Why is that?”

”Because of…” Voldemort looked at him without speaking for so long that Harry began to worry if he’d failed to spot a flaw in the glasses when he’d examined them. “Because of a prophecy. This is how friendships are forged, by offering secrets. I’d like you to be your friend, Mister Potter.” Voldemort sighed. “I won’t bother you with the details, which merely identify the subject, but there are four lines that make her important. ‘The last hope of the sea, to reunite the brothers three and there rule long and justly reign, a Gilead ‘gainst the dawn’s mean wane.’ The sea is Britain and her territories, of course, and the brothers are the fragments of the Empire, disunited but not forever. Which, I surmise, must be so if Britain is to be preserved. _The last hope of the sea_ ,” he repeated.

“It’s your other Harry. The prophecy is about your other Harry.”

Voldemort nodded. “That was surprisingly quick of you. Are you the subject of prophecy yourself?”

“Yes.”

“I won’t trouble you for the specifics. It isn’t my world. Unless you think it might concern mine?”

Harry shook his head. _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…_ Unless it was this Voldemort that it was talking about. “I don’t think that I can be your friend, though. Even with that news.”

“Don’t worry about it. No one can be my friend.” Voldemort didn’t look as troubled as Harry would have expected someone else to be. “But I take care of that which is mine. Now, would you like to see where we’re going? Our work for the Emperor will dovetail with our search for Grindelwald’s weapon.”

Voldemort lead him to a pensieve, and there Harry began to learn the road that Voldemort had already begun to trace out, starting with a few scenes of Grindelwald at the height of his power. His weapon was a long and beautiful wand that went alternately by the names Elder Wand and Deathstick, the latter of which Voldemort dismissed as being overly dramatic. Where the trail had gone cold for so many others

“As you will see in just a moment,” Voldemort soon said, “it was stolen before Grindelwald ever died.”

Years before, in fact, but few had cottoned on to that. Instead they continued to search for the replacement wand and they either failed for lack of skill or were too easily satisfied with what they discovered: a wand that may not have been the real thing but was nevertheless powerful in its own right.

From the thief it fell into the hands of an American warlord who carved out a dominion in the Sovereign Territories in the New World. Another American, a magical theorist from the Bloodworth Family, took it from him, but it disappeared for a couple of years when he went to Australia.

From the cult of the Spider Children it went to Argentina, and then back to the Old World in the Ukraine. From a golem fashioner to a wand-smith, to an alchemist. Roald Dahl made reference to it in a letter, having been shown the wand by a friend in France but not told its true nature, and it changed hands again.

Where it was now, Voldemort didn’t know, but he knew where he could find the man that had lost it: A small Belgian town, near the border dividing Leviathan and Behemoth.

* * *

 

_The last hope of the sea_

_To reunite the brothers three_

_And there rule long and justly reign,_

_A Gilead ‘gainst the dawn’s mean wane._


	7. The Girl Who Went Shopping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gaaah. I am... not entirely thrilled with this chapter. 
> 
> /shrug.
> 
> If I indulged my perfectionism, I would never release any of my stories into the wild...

_April 13 th, 1997_

It was a good thing that Harry hadn’t developed an aversion to Polyjuice because she was operating under it right now. At least she was able to be a girl again, if only for a little while. It felt a little less awkward to move around, she thought.

She and Snape had gone to Diagon Alley to acquire a few books, most notably _Prayers to Hoaxes_ , a collection of letters from the Sixteenth Century that had been referenced in some of the other Harry’s notes as something to follow up if the chance ever arose. It seemed mostly mad to Harry when she flipped through it, but her counterpart had been keeping an eye out for a copy so into their stack it went.

With one hand she held a bag of books at her side. Her other, she kept close to her wand, opposite her enchanted stun baton.

What a silly name that was. Stun baton.

“Professor Snape, sir?”

“Yes, Harry?” He was examining a small bauble that they had acquired in a detour down Knockturn, a lapis lazuli star that aided mutual, consensual uses of legilimency. Like so many other things they had no idea if it would be useful, but more importantly they didn’t know that it wouldn’t and— this business being about minds to begin with— there was a sufficient possibility that it would.

“What is the hollow house?”

He looked at her. “I think that the most disconcerting thing about you is that you are not inclined to conduct your walking and your reading at the same time, let alone walking, read, and carrying on conversation with all those around you.”

“Professor, you’re changing the subject,” Harry said. “It was in his notes. Several times.”

“It is a very bad place.”

“And that’s all that you’re gonna tell me?”

“Harry,” Snape said slowly, “you called your headmaster the greatest wizard who ever lived.”

“He is!” Harry confirmed proudly. “And more than that, if it were possible.”

Snape cocked his head. “You’re very close to him.”

“Hufflepuff,” Harry declared with as much pride as her last statement. “He’s my friend.”

“Why? Why does he deserve your loyalty?”

Harry glared at him. “He gave me _everything_. He’s my mentor, he’s my friend, he’s… He’s _everything_ to me,” she said softly.

“Then, as you would do for your headmaster, trust me when I say that there are some things that need to be left to themselves for now,” Snape replied. “You’re not ready yet.”

His eyes were like broken steel, sharp and hard. They brooked no dissent.

“Okay.”

This wasn’t the end of it. She would make sure of that. But perhaps it was better to wait.

“How are you doing with the other students?” Snape asked.

“Alright. Ginny… I don’t like lying to her.” Harry sighed. “Or anyone else, really.”

“But you mentioned Ginny first. The others were an afterthought. Why was that?”

In the distance, around a corner or two, something cracked. Like lightning.

“She trusts me. Well, she trusts your Harry, but that’s who she thinks I am.”

Like a small storm.  

Snape flicked his wand. “Harry!” He said, almost too low for her to hear. “There are anti-apparition wards set up here.”

A side-along escape wasn’t an option then. But that didn’t matter much to her.

“You would just run away?”

Harry could hear brief screams and the crackle of fire.

“My mark is burning. Voldemort has come.” Snape swallowed. “Several of him, and I fear I know which of them it is.” He shrunk the gem in his hands and flicked his wand to do the same to her books. “Has Headmaster Riddle told you about winning battles at the cost of losing wars?”

She nodded.

“We need you and we need our Harry. We need the books that you have.”

The tumult was growing closer, the sound of spellfire in the background, and Harry suddenly became aware of the oddity of their appearance, standing still and calm as other wizards and witches ran past them in panic.

Snape sighed, evidently having come to some kind of decision. “You may be a Knight of Merlin’s Order, but do not lose the war for us today.”

“I won’t.”

He turned his head. “Then we will go. Answer my call to arms and, if it comes, heed my call to flee. We may at least be able to hinder them today.”

“Aye, captain.”

“Then to arms, Miss Potter.”

“To arms.”

They ran or flew or charged like knights, Harry thoughts. Like agents of Britain’s Authority, like Tonks and her Headmaster, or wizard-janissaries in those Araby films from the Seventies. Into the jaws of death, she thought, and she hoped only that they would fare better than the Light Brigade of old.

They went forth like knights, and as though they were Excalibur and Arthur’s shield-breaker, so she held her wand and her stun baton.

There were three of them standing in the wreckage about them, all of them wretched and cruel and lean like starving wolves. One of them stood above the rest, skin patchy and discolored, rotting and in some places nearly falling off the bone. His wand was clutched tightly in a skeletal hand.

“Albus…” Snape whispered. “Albus Dumbledore.”

Snape had told her that a horcrux had recently been made out of an inferius. She hadn’t realized that the inferius was of Snape’s predecessor.

“Wars and battles,” Harry reminded him and then, noticing the look in his eyes, she nodded to herself and made her decision.

Let Snape take the others. She didn’t know the dates, but she knew that Dumbledore hadn’t been dead long enough for the scars to fade. There were strings that this horcrux could pull, but not against her. Dumbledore was only ancient history to her, dead before she was born.

“You idiot child!”

“Leave it to me, captain!”

In the corner of her eye she could see him grimace, but she could also see him turn to face another of the horcruxes. There was one that could not be seen at all save by the flurry of his spellwork and the destruction that was left in his wake. This one, Snape had told her once, was a soul bound in an invisibility cloak, possessing whatever hapless fool had been forced to don it.

Against a foe that he could not see but indirectly, the man held his ground remarkably well.

“Severus Snape!” roared a voice without a source. “You can’t hide the taste of the Dark Mark from us! No matter what face you wear!”

Harry likened herself unto a dancer. She moved between strikes, in the spaces betwixt green death. With wands like blades, wands that wrote into the air like poison quills, she replied spell with spell, curse with curse. Spells that tore, spells that blasted, spells that called, blood to blood and bone to bone, and twisted or bit.

She could hear screams, and she could not distinguish hers from the horcruxes, nor theirs from Snape’s.

“Little girl, little boy, _tricky_ boy,” the horcrux said. “I feel… your scar…”

Ah. That.

“Fuck you!”

The rejoinder of the century. Headmaster Riddle would be _so proud_ of her.

She better make sure he never heard about it…

“Why your second wand, Harry?” he asked. “If that is what it is.”

“Try it and find out!” she shouted. Her thrust only grazed his side— she wasn’t used to an electric wand like this, one that needed forward contact like a spear— but his face twisted as her spell plugged into his body, twisted and molded by the electricity of her stun baton.

She was glad that inferi, or at least those that had been corrupted further by a horcrux, could feel some kind of pain. Some unpleasant sensation, whatever it was.

Further off, Snape continued to hold off the other two horcruxes. The third was gray and smooth-skinned where the inferius was putrid and disintegrating, like a lungfish in the shape of a sexless human figure. No nose, no ears, no mouth, and its only eye an electric blue orb that spun and spun like a lighthouse beacon. Knives hung from its side, but it made no attempt to use them.

According to Snape its soul resided in the orb, a prosthetic eye from an auror who died in the war against the original Voldemort. The battle that had led to it was fierce enough to have left no other survivors, and Voldemort had come out of it three fingers poorer than before. But the eye was worth it. The horcrux could see through enchantments, barriers, even invisibility cloaks. It was perhaps the main reason that the horcrux was able to keep its partners, and others, in line.

Snape was beginning to lose ground, though. If the assault from one was nearly too much, then both at once were overwhelming. He could only stave them off. And Harry could only remember that what he had told her was true.

But she would not cut and run.

“Reducto! Conjunctivis! Oppugno!” she shouted, running her stun baton along the ground and letting her magic channel into the dust beneath her feet. In a cloud she moved, a cloud that swirled around but away from her eyes and invaded his. “Expulso! Expulso!”

Her ears rang with the sound of the explosions.

“Oppugno!” More fragments rose from the ground, rubble and concrete shards that bashed and broke and sliced the inferius horcrux.

And in the distance, where she could not see, Snape fell. She could hear him, though, hear him shout in pain, hear the curse that brought him down, and then the one that disarmed him

“Professor Snape!”

She turned in time to hear the curse that cut his voice short, but she could not see it. All was dust, all was dust, she in the storm as much the inferius. But she was in the eye of the storm, she _was_ the eye. She was the storm.

The other horcruxes wouldn’t let her cut and run, but she didn’t care. Let them come. And until they did, she would fall upon her original foe.

“Expulso!”

Past the dust that shielded her as much as it obscured her, she almost, almost was blinded by the blue light of her curse. Blasting curses followed. A flagrante curse turned the rubble searing hot. Then full-body binds and firestorm spells.

Harry moved in again, jabbing rather than slicing, and she could feel her magic skip inside her as her stun baton made contact with the inferius. As the circuit of her magic… completed, and not in herself.

“Expulso!”

Her magic, fused, accelerated, enhanced, supercharged… She let it all go through, let it run along the channels that she had carefully crafted into the stun baton, like she remembered doing with the very first electric wand that she had ever enchanted. Back when she was very young, when the headmaster’s hand’s guiding her own as they guided her wand for her.

The inferius was half a body, half a _thing_ , blasted to shreds that could barely hang together. It fell where it had stood, armless, nearly legless, practically headless and almost without a single rib remaining to its frame. If it still held a soul, then it was still too broken to move. She could handle it later.

Harry turned to receive the other horcruxes, but they seemed not to have moved. Even the cloak horcrux she could detect, making out its footprints in the dust. The gray-skinned horcrux regarded her curiously, as Headmaster Riddle and Snape had both done so often, and it made several movements with its hands to the other horcrux.

The aberration returned its gaze to Harry and only stared. And then it moved again, and with one of its knives it tore a gash across its lower face to reveal rows of gnashing fangs, like a tunnel of gears pressing and grinding together.

“HaRrY PoTtEr…” it said. “So sTrAnGe. So dIfFeReNt tHaN I ReMeMbEr. LiTtLe GiRl.” The wound, knitting itself even as the horcrux spoke, healed too far for the horcrux to continue talking, and it drew the knife across its face again. “I WiLl rEmEmBeR,” it promised.

The wound, its mouth, resealed, and it made another series of hand signs to its partner before it raised its wand, presumably as the other did the same. A crack signaled its disappearance, and almost immediately there another as the other followed suit.

Harry half-walked, half-stumbled to where Snape lay, and let herself fall to her knees.

“I’m sorry, Professor Snape. I could have taken two. I should have taken two. I should have let us cut and run…”

Where was the glory here?

When the crack of lightning came again, when Filius placed his hand on her shoulder, she barely noticed at all. Just enough to confirm it wasn’t a threat, and then she retreated into herself again.


	8. War & Belgian Waffles

_April 14 th, 1997_

Trois-Pont, Belgium. Thirty minutes west of the Behemoth/Leviathan border, by rail. Fourteen minutes from Hogwarts, if one went through all the approved international and cross-country apparition and portkey points.

“Our contact has been retired for almost as long as you’ve been alive,” Voldemort explained as they stepped up to the flat. “I can’t imagine that he will be very happy that we’re bringing the war to his doorstep.”

Harry noticed that Voldemort did not look heartbroken by this.

“But I hope he has realized that the war is coming with or without my presence,” Voldemort added.

“Really?”

Voldemort tapped his wand on the door, producing knocks far louder than the stick of wood would have made without the aid of magic. “They had better. I design my plans to proceed even in the event of my untimely demise.”

Harry looked up at him. “When do you intend to die?”

“The day after tomorrow— and if you ask me the same thing tomorrow, I’ll respond the same.” His shoulders sagged but for a moment, but Harry caught it. “But I can’t expect to escape death forever. It will swallow me up as it did Grindelwald.”

The door opened slowly, revealing a haggard, scarred man clad in fine robes. “You won’t take no for an answer.”

“I only want a few of your stories, Gilderoy.”

The man— Gilderoy— snorted. “You can’t break into my mind, so you decide to go the nice route. Don’t think I don’t know your games, Riddle.” He turned to Harry. “I retired from Britain for a reason, and it’s standing on my doorstep now.”

“Gilderoy, Gilderoy…” Voldemort murmured soothingly.

“Lockhart to you!”

“Lockhart, then” he corrected. “A story? Just one. Besides, don’t you notice my spectacles? You have nothing to fear.”

If Voldemort’s wand twitched just so, before Harry noticed a curious glint in Gilderoy’s eyes… No, Harry couldn’t be sure. But possibly.

Gilderoy set them up in a common room for entertaining guests and set out tea and waffles. “Only the finest, I make them myself, no house-elves or spellwork at all. Chocolate and raspberry filling, you’ll notice.”

Retired shut-ins, Harry decided then and there, made the best cooks.

“Vo— Headmaster Riddle didn’t explain to me why you had retired,” Harry said, trying to jumpstart conversation.

“I was a traveler. And a right good one. Traveling scholar, like the sophoi of old Greece. But better, what with magic at my hands. And if I had to get into a fight or ten or slay the odd werewolf, then that was how things went. But… it wears on a man.” Gilderoy shook his head and looked to the side, at one of the bookcases lining the walls. “I carry curses in me. Many of them very dangerous.”

“ _In_ you? What do you mean?”

“There’s many a spell that even I couldn’t negate the effects of, but I could halt them in their tracks.” He gestured to an area around his liver. “Here, I was hit by a curse that started to turn my fat to some kind of acidic jelly. A long, painful death that would be. But I keep them contained. Except that it makes any other magic very dangerous to use.”

“If Gilderoy disrupts the enchantments and charms woven through his body then any one of those curses might start again to work its way through his body,” Voldemort explained.

“The fat-acid spell,” Harry said. “How does that work? A transfiguration base, I assume, but where do you go from there?”

“You think that I know how to work it?”

“I’m sure that you know more than the wizard that cast it at you. I can’t imagine just leaving a spell like that in me if there were half a chance that some book somewhere might hold the key to getting rid of it.”

Gilderoy’s smile almost seemed to reach his ears. “Yes, and I searched for awhile, I’ll tell you. I went to Rome first. My attacker, you see, had been hired by a man working in one of the appendage bureaus of Milan…”

Voldemort had been right: Gilderoy loved to tell stories. He was good at it, too. Harry didn’t feel impatient at all as he and Voldemort took turns asking just the right questions or making such-and-such a comment that turned the conversation down another lane, until finally they arrived at the Elder Wand. The Wand of Destiny, as Gilderoy liked to call it.

Gilderoy came back with more tea before he continued.

Harry wondered if it was just something about the light, or if the man looked the slightest bit crestfallen upon his return. Or just before he left for the tea, the tea that he now held carefully near his mouth even as he spoke, the tea that he drank so slowly, as if it were an elixir of life.

He spoke of how he had come into possession of the wand, a sequence of events with which Voldemort was most familiar with, and then how he had lost it. Voldemort himself filled in details afterward and together, between what the two of them knew of the shifts of history, it seemed that they knew who now had the wand. Harry found it hard to keep up, the conversation starting and going in fits and starts, turning down paths he couldn’t fathom and its sentences being started by one and ended by another— or interrupted, as the other completed it in its head and went on to the next.

Gilderoy finished the dregs of his tea only as Voldemort finished talking. He looked at Harry. He looked at him most oddly. “You’re a good girl, Harry. A good listener. I’m glad to have made your acquaintance.” He swallowed. “Don’t remember me as a fool who couldn’t tell when a story was being drawn out of him.”

“What?”

“But I thank you for the opportunity for one last round of campfire stories.” He rose from his chair, struggling as he did so. He threw one arm out for balance. “You’d best be going, Mr. Riddle.” He groaned and leaned on the arm of his chair. “He’s coming. Soon, or sooner.”

Riddle nodded. “Do you want me to do it for you?”

“I took a potion in my tea. It should be enough to destabilize the magic in my body.” He looked at Harry. “There’s no escape for me. I know too much. But I had a fun time, didn’t I? Maybe you’ll find out when they… when they declassify me…” He shook his head again. “But better this than torture. The Eternal Kaiser can keep any man alive, they say. Now there won’t be pain.”

“I could make it painless,” Voldemort offered.

An explosion rocked the flat, nearly throwing Gilderoy to the floor. He shook his head. “Let them do their job. I killed everyone who ever tried to kill me.” He shuddered. “Ohh… So I’ll be a good sport and let some of them get what they wanted.”

Gilderoy slowly lowered himself to the floor, his back against the chair. “I won’t be dying in bed after all. Haa…” His laugh slowly turned into a moan of pain.

“Let’s go,” Voldemort said.

“But Gilderoy—”

“Will die a hero’s death. Alone,” Voldemort replied. “As heroes do. Apparition would kill him just as easily, and running will take us only so far.”

Harry spared him one last glance, biting his lip as GIlderoy shut his eyes, and then followed after.

Outside, the war had come. Outside, Hell had poured out its mouth.

“We run,” Voldemort said, taking in the sight. “We run, and the moment that I tell you to, you grab my hand. I’ll dismantle their blocks as we go.”

Harry looked at him.

“I intend to die, but only the day after tomorrow.”

“Their blocks?”

“You didn’t feel the anti-apparition wards come up?”

Behemoth’s war-wizards seemed to be faceless. Rather than robes, they wore what looked to Harry to be like carapaces, carapaces that flowed like water and bent like light, but hard and unyielding to harm. Less like individuals and more like a cloud they moved, all together, acting, reacting as one.

And if a cloud, then it was a storm that they unleashed upon all in their path, a storm of spells, with wands and things that were not wands.

Fire charms and blasting curses only barely held them off, but the things that fell from Voldemort’s lips, that fell as Behemoth soldiers fell before them, were words that Harry was loathe to hear, let alone repeat. Things that hurt him just to listen, and which he knew must have wracked Voldemort’s body with every syllable.

Blood pounding in his head like a ceaseless drum-beat, down, down, down, he was barely able to keep aware of anything but the pounding of his feet and his heart and the sound, all around, all around, the screams and explosions as the city tore itself apart. And through it all Voldemort continued to lay down disenchantment spells, struggling to find a sensitive point from whence to unravel a hole in the wards.

Harry barely noticed when Voldemort pulled out a muggle handgun and fired it at one of the soldiers. And again, at others. Barely noticed, but still did, and noticed his grin, the grin that he had held since the killing had begun.

Down, down, down… into fire, into the maelstrom, like watching Ahab as he lanced every whale and turned the whole ocean red.

What was behind him? What was behind those eyes, that open smile?

“Harriett!” Voldemort cried, and Harry came to his senses again.

Voldemort’s arm was outstretched, held out in front of Harry. And before him, before the both of them, was another wizard, clad in black streaming carapace armor but mangled and twisted, fallen upon his knees, suffering the aftereffects of a curse that Harry hadn’t noticed Voldemort utter.

Just as he hadn’t noticed the soldier’s spell.

“Riddle…” he muttered. Voldemort’s arm was beginning to blacken from a center point, spreading and spiraling from where, Harry surmised, the spell had hit him.

“Don’t bother about it,” Voldemort told him. “I can contain the curse.” He looked away, scanning for more enemies. Or simply trying not to meet Harry’s eyes. “But the body you are in belongs to my student. She can’t return to her people if you’re harmed.”

“Of course.”

“It’s almost time to go. I have an exit nearly built.”

The apparition only took them a few dozen miles.


	9. The Girl who stood Vigil

_April 16 th, 1997_

Most of the mourners had left already, but Harry was still standing off to the side of Snape’s brownstone tomb. Filius stood beside her, silent save for a few words that he had spoken half an hour ago.

“We still don’t know what the horcruxes were doing at Diagon?” Harry asked.

The grass was wet beneath her feet.

Filius shook his head. “Only guesses, and it’s possible that we couldn’t understand their motives if we tried. They’ve been among the craftier horcruxes, especially the homunculus with the eye, but the soul-splitting has taken a toll on all of them. Some of them have tried devouring the others in an attempt to repair the damage but that seems to have had other consequences for them. That’s how the original activation was finally destroyed, forcibly split and devoured by a gang of others, including the homunculus that you meant.”

Snape’s tomb. And Dumbledore’s, now that they’d retrieved what was left of his inferius.

“How many are out there?”

Harry still felt bad about that, now that she was able to think about what she had done. Even if she hadn’t really done anything to Dumbledore himself.

“A hundred or more,” Filius answered. “Maybe half that in Britain, and the rest scattered across the world. Those are mostly the older horcruxes, the ones that knew they had little chance of defeating versions of themselves that knew more magic and knew what they would have done in their younger years.”

But thinking about that had led to thinking about other things.

“I had trained for this,” she said. “You know that. I’m going to be a Knight. A Knight of Merlin’s Order. But I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t think about everything that I needed to think about. It wasn’t that I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t smart enough.” She paused. “The Headmaster could have done it with half of what I had.”

“You’re sixteen,” Filius told her.

“That’s old enough to cast a curse. I’d already _be_ a Knight in older times.”

“Be that as it may, these are the times that you’re in.”

Harry didn’t say anything to that.

“You mentioned the hollow house to me recently, do you remember?”

Harry nodded.

“I spoke with Professor Bones— excuse me, Headmistress, Headmistress Bones, and in light of the situation we think that you need to see it.”

“What is it?”

Filius didn’t respond immediately. “It’ll be best if you saw it for yourself.”

Harry didn’t respond, and Filius left a little later, a pat on her shoulder to say goodbye. Ginny came over a few minutes after that. She sat down next to Harry and patted the ground beside her. When that didn’t work, she pulled on one of Harry’s sleeves until Harry finally sat down.

“Even if you’re not… _my_ Harry,” Ginny said after awhile, “you’re still Harry. Somehow. And you told me when you didn’t have to, because you didn’t want to lie to me. That sounds like a friend. You’re a _good friend_ ,” she said, leaving no room for protest.

Harry understood, and leaned against her.

“Professor Snape wouldn’t have liked it,” Harry said.

“I still appreciate it.”

“Should I tell his family, you think?” She looked at Ginny. “How would I do that, anyway? Do they live in Surrey in this world? Professor Snape looked upset when I asked about them.”

Ginny looked at her oddly. “They wouldn’t care… They used to hurt Harry. They’d do anything that didn’t leave a mark. It only stopped when Snape found out. He told Dumbledore that either Harry would be staying at Hogwarts or Snape would be staying at the Dursleys, and I guess Dumbledore thought the latter might result in some dead Dursleys. I think there were some protections on the house, but then Snape went and talked to them and then… they were gone? Or they didn’t work anymore or something. Harry only told me a little bit. But Dumbledore gave in after that and never talked about the protections anymore,” Ginny finished.

“Oh…” Harry choked back a sudden sob. She tried to make it sound like a cough, but by the look that Ginny gave her the other girl hadn’t fallen for it. “I was hoping to see them before I left,” she said in a flattened tone.

“Why?”

“I miss them. They died a long time ago. When I was nine.” As if it were happening to someone else, Harry only distantly noticed as her cheeks became wet. “And they weren’t like that at all. They were nice. Dudley was my best friend. And then— and then they died, and there was nobody else left, nobody who was alive. I became a ward of the state.”

“Who did you go to after that?”

Harry didn’t answer.

“Thanks for being friendly, Ginny.”

“No problem.” Ginny paused. “Hey, um… I’m sorry for trying to kiss you that one time, by the way. I hope that wasn’t too awkward. I just thought you were, well, you know, my Harry was being silly.”

Harry shrugged. “There were worse ways to have had my first.”

 

_April 17 th, 1997_

 

Oh, Harry was already familiar with the hollow house, as it turned out. Very familiar.

“Riddle Manor,” she said, suddenly out of breath. It was so _old_ looking. So dilapidated.

It was a ruin, she thought.

Filius paused. There was a need to recover from the stress of apparating past the decaying wards here, but more than that… “You know this place?”

Harry nodded as she slowly ascended the steps. “Headmaster Riddle took me here sometimes.” She knocked on the door once, then realized how foolish it was to knock at an empty house and simply went inside. “I went here first when the Dursleys died. The Headmaster had a room set up for me but I wanted to sleep on the couch.” She smiled. “They found a place for me the next day, but the Headmaster had wanted to make sure I was safe in the meantime.”

Filius followed close behind her as she wandered the halls. His eyes seemed to cover every inch of the house, looking everywhere and nowhere all at once, but for Harry every tarnished object was a terrible miracle, a memento of another world or a reminder, by its novelty, of how different the two worlds were. She couldn’t see the forest, but only the trees.

“I’ll bet that I could even find my old bedroom. I stayed here for a month last summer. He was gone for most of the time but…” Her voice was more brittle this time. “The library’s a wreck too, I’ll reckon.”

“It was,” someone said. Not Filius, but someone with like voice of crushed glass and sour wine. “Albus’ cronies restored much of it, however.”

Harry spun around. Between her and Filius stood… nothing. But in the mirror she could see something, a mad hermit’s memory of a man, or a nightmare’s nightmare. Something frailer and meaner and more off-putting than both of them together.

Harry’s hand stopped just short of touching the mirror. “You’re a horcrux. But why did you bind yourself to a mirror?”

The grey-black shape shook its head. “Not the mirror.” The voice was coming from all around her now. “The house.”

“The hollow house.”

“At your service.”

“Why?”

“Why limit myself to six horcruxes? That’s what I asked myself when I was younger. Seven was better than six, wasn’t it? And if it was, then fifty was surely better than even seven. I realized that I wasn’t being cautious enough. If I was going as far as six then that implied that some part of me thought someone could destroy five. I chose prudence over pride that day.”

“And if five, why not fifty-five?”

“Correct.” The shape twisted in a way that Harry supposed might have been a smile. “Professor Flitwick explained to me something of your situation. I’m willing to offer my services in an advisory role, as always.” Perhaps it was just her imagination, but Harry thought she felt a chill or something else run down her just then.

“Why?”

“They’re getting rid of the competition for me. Not that they put any stock in motives even as selfish as that. I know that they don’t trust anything that I say until they’ve verified it three ways over. But there’s something different about you…”

The shape laughed.

“I can feel it. I felt you the moment that you apparated onto the grounds. I think that I could have felt it from even further away. I felt something different many days ago, even. No doubt that’s why these other horcruxes went to Diagon Alley, even if they weren’t sure what was going on.” The shadow paused, as if considering something. “After all, I wasn’t sure until Bones and Flitwick told me, and I had an inkling of your double’s plans. But there’s always a rhyme and reason to our actions. Broken as we are, though, sometimes we just can’t figure it out.”

“Are you talking about the connection to the scar on this body?”

“Yes.”

“Why would any of that change? It’s still the same body and the same scar. Shouldn’t it be the same magic?”

The shape made a motion suggestive of a shrug. “I split my soul. Many times. Like an open wound, it has become especially sensitive.” It turned to Filius. “Do you know?”

“No.”

“Then let me venture that we have learned more than one thing today. Whatever this project was that this world’s Harry was working on, it doesn’t work on the mind. He may have thought it did, but he was wrong. It pulls on the soul, and you can’t just _copy_ a part of a soul. Cut it? Remove it? Yes. With more power perhaps he could have made himself your horcrux, a vessel for a part of your soul, but instead he simply rotated your positions.”

For a moment Harry had a horrible thought about the indestructibility of a horcrux located in another universe entirely. What made it worse was that if she had thought it then surely the horcrux here had as well, or soon would.

Filius looked thoughtful. “If that’s true, then we could run some experiments to find out for sure.”

“I’m always glad to be of service. You know that. You won’t find a way to destroy this house, I’m sure of that. I had all of the time in the world to make the best of my circumstances.”

“Voldemort,” Harry said.

“Yes, girl?”

“Come with me. I’d like to talk with you about something. Filius, can you stay behind for a minute?”

“But—”

“I’ll be careful.” She turned back to the mirror. “If this house is your horcrux then we’re inside your horcrux, right?”

“That’s correct.”

“Great.”

Ignoring Filius’ protests, Harry walked away. And when she came back there was only one thing that she had to say.

“You know that horcux that’s made out of the cloak? We’re going to beat it.”


	10. Audited & Behind Lines

_April 18 th, 1997_

Apparition could be tracked very easily here, Harry learned. That it could be tracked at all wasn’t new, but this “blue science” thing that was so popular in this world— and with good reason— was behind a system that Voldemort had called “pylons.” They were basically everywhere, an infrastructure built up by Grindelwald before his death, and they were as useful for tracking apparition as they were for guiding the same across long distances.

There were ways around that, though. This train that they had just boarded was their fourth.

“I’ve been thinking about some things,” Harry said as he settled into his seat. “Since we left Gilderoy.”

“What, exactly?” Voldemort tossed a scrap piece of paper out of the window. A moment later, as the train started to roll forward, he drew a shrunken book, something on physics, out of his pocket and resized it. Harry was used to him reading and carrying on a conversation at the same time. Harry had done it as well, but there was no shortage of times that the strangeness of this world caught up to him and he could focus on nothing else.

“When our worlds diverged,” Harry answered. “I think that it was when Grindelwald killed Dumbledore. It was the other way around, in my world.”

“Interesting.”

“And I think… I think that means I know who controls the Elder Wand in my world.”

Voldemort looked up from the book. “Really.”

“It was Dumbledore. It must have been,” Harry said, losing himself to the thoughts drifting through his mind. “He defeated Grindelwald, who had the wand. So the wand passed on to him. And then y— Voldemort killed him. One of his horcruxes, anyway.” Harry looked out the window. “But I don’t think that the horcrux knew about the Elder Wand because it’s still with Dumbledore’s body the last time that I checked.”

He looked back to see Voldemort staring at him.

“I… created horcruxes in this world of yours,” he said. There was no sense of expression in his voice. “Multiple.” He smiled, just barely. “I caught your slip. Or slips. A few partial syllables here and there add up. But _horcruxes_.”

Harry felt an urge to squint his eyes at Voldemort. “You don’t have any?”

“I have too much pride to lose myself to an addiction to dark magic.”

“You were serious about being willing to die.”

Voldemort nodded. “But what about Grindelwald’s death could have changed my course?” he asked, leaning back on his bench.

Harry had to stifle a laugh. This was ridiculous. “Nothing.” 

“I beg your pardon.”

“You— well, the other you, he made his first two horcruxes two years before Dumbledore and Grindelwald had their final duel. And Grindelwald didn’t die then anyway. He was just imprisoned.”

“Dumbledore was merciful.”

“And here, Dumbledore’s dead. Because you… what? Didn’t make any horcruxes? How does that add up?”

“I can’t tell you.” Voldemort paused and dashed the air with his wand. “We may need to get going.”

“Why?”

“I just had to dismantle a detection ward in the surrounding cars.” Voldemort touched the frame of his spectacles. “It would be preferred if we could speak more surreptitiously, mind to mind.”

Harry thought about what he had seen. The little things that Voldemort had said that didn’t make sense. The way that Tonks had looked at him, had talked with him. The way that he carried himself, even, and the fear, the honest to Merlin _fear_ that he had heard in the wizard’s voice when he blocked that curse from the Behemoth soldier.

He thought of the blackness that was on Voldemort’s arm even now, slowly growing every day and turning gray at the edges. To protect that other Harry. His student.

“Sure,” he said, and Voldemort removed the spectacles before Harry’s breath had fully left his mouth.

His mind slammed into Harry’s own like the train they were riding, and for a horrible second Harry thought that he should have been more suspicious, that he had been so naïve.

 _Der Prüfer are here_ , he was made aware _._

The Eternal Kaiser’s Death Eaters, Harry had decided when he heard about them days before. Their name meant inspectors, auditors, and examiners, and they nicely filled all those roles.

_Then what are we going to do?_

_Grindelwald’s tools were called the Deathly Hallows_ , Harry became aware, and he wondered if Voldemort— no, Riddle, if Riddle somehow hadn’t understood his message.

Harry stared at him, wondering how to make a shout out of a thought. _Are we running? Laying a defense? This is your world, not mine._

 _Grindelwald took many years to collect them all._ Riddle held up a hand but otherwise stayed motionless. _When you return to your world, find the Elder Wand. Let it draw you to the other Hallows. The Resurrection Stone and the Cloak of Invisibility, the Peverell Family: Let these be the names to guide you._

Harry could hear them getting closer, announcing a car-by-search for fugitives. He could hear stressed cries, and demands for paperwork to be displayed. He wondered how good their disguises were, if their polyjuice and enchantments would be enough to convince der Prüfer to move on.

_Why are you telling me now?_

_You needed to know sometime._

The door to their compartment opened up. Standing outside it were five men in silver-and-white robes. Darkness swallowed up their faces, like a void ripped out and strew across them, dappled nothingness and streaks of oblivion. Their wands were leveled mostly at Riddle.

Der Prüfer.

Harry wondered how good their chances were, that this was all a horrible, horrible coincidence and the search was going on for some other reason.

“We are conducting a search of every compartment,” one said in a voice that failed to betray its sex. “We require your papers.”

Riddle handed them over. There was a lengthy pause as it flipped through forged passports and tickets. The Prüfer gave them back, seemingly satisfied, and for a moment Harry thought that they were in the clear.

“Shamil Sultanovich and Elton Bussink…” Harry couldn’t tell, but he thought that the Prüfer looked back and forth between them. Those weren’t the names on their paperwork, though.

And then Harry realized what was happening.

Oh damn it all.

“Please come with us to the back of the train.” The Prüfer’s fingers slid back and forth along its wand. “If you cooperate, we will allow you to make a deal.”

Riddle slowly stood up. “It would be our pleasure to cooperate with you fully,” he said, and then he turned. “Come, Elton.”

 _Sultanovich and Bussink._ Harry thought he could feel cold laughter. _A couple of blackmail artists from out of Tangiers. Nobody expects us to put up a fight— they’re runners only— so live up to the expectation for now._

Harry did as he was told, his head bowed, and focused on the compartments and cars that they passed through and the feel of the chilly air through his clothing as they passed from one car to another. He wondered what kind of deal they were going to work out with der Prüfer. If Riddle was planning on subtly pumping them for information at the same time that they played interrogator.

It was none of that at all, he learned.

It happened as soon as they passed into the luggage car.

“Reducto!”

Harry hit the floor and rolled out of the way, taking cover behind a too-small box whose size he fixed with an engorgement charm. That hadn’t been Riddle’s voice. He looked back to take stock of the situation just in time to see a Prüfer raise its wand in Riddle’s direction.

He cast an incendio, Riddle cast protego to shield the Prüfer, and then Harry decided that the world didn’t make sense anymore. Or he had been right from the beginning and everything was going horribly, horribly bad and he wasn’t going to get out of here alive.

Then he noticed the decapitated corpse bleeding out on the floor, just as the other two Prüfer dropped to the floor. He looked at the survivor, the one that Riddle had saved.

A plant?

The shadows concealing its identity slowly dissolved, but Harry still didn’t recognize the face until it started to change.

“Tonks?”

She grinned.

“You’re lucky I was along to save your arses. Even yours, Tom,” she said. She poked the air with her wand.

“Would you have been here if I hadn’t requested it?”

“Naw. Probably doing something boring,” she replied.

“How long were you one of them?”

“Since one of them wandered off a little while ago. They’re not used to metamorphmagi, I reckon!”

Riddle tapped each of Prüfer in turn. They seemed to disappear under the touch of his wand. “Nor old wizards that know their spells. But then, they weren’t expecting either of us.” He smiled. “Shamil and Elton owe us for a lucky break, I think. Here, Harry. Take a cloak. I’ll do it for you since you don’t know how.” 

Harry held the cloth in his hands. “We’re disguising ourselves as der Prüfer?”

Riddle nodded. “We’ll throw these pebbles outside when we cross back to the next car,” he said, holding out three small rocks in his hand.

“Der Prüfer?”

Riddle nodded.


	11. The Girl Who Saw Darkness

_April 20 th, 1997_

Filius and Headmistress Bones had fought with Harry a little bit when she demanded to have Filch on the team, but for God’s sake he was _Argus Filch_. Argus Filch of _Filch’s Five Laws_. His intuitive grasp of blue science was greater than even Ekayanake’s, for all that was holy under the sun. Maybe he didn’t know all of the details but if he was the same person then he had to have the same instincts, and the others were beginning to admit that she just may have been right.

“How are the networks coming Dr. Filch?” she asked him. He looked at her with that all-too-familiar expression of his, the one that revealed he couldn’t decide whether to be pissed with her or appreciative of how highly she regarded him.

She would take whatever he dished out, though. He’d been ornery in her world too.

“For the last time, you daft girl, I’m not…” Filch scowled. “Trying to match this to them diagrams you drew up but I don’t think it’s close enough.”

“Sshh,” she replied. “Most of the folks here just think I’m your Harry,” she whispered. “Now, don’t worry overmuch about it. I’ll check the work after, just keep your feelings open and if you think something’s weird, pay attention to that.”

“It’s all bizarre…” he muttered.

Harry smiled at him before she went over to the next room. The… horcrux that was in or was the house was keeping to itself, as they’d agreed on, and nobody working here was any wiser about the significance of this ramshackle estate.

“Harry!” Filius called, hurtling down the stairs so fast that it was nearly a controlled fall. “How’s on the main floor?”

“Fine, fine,” she told him. Harry waved her stun baton lazily in the direction of the hall. “The lights are getting all hooked up with each other and the wiring is getting layered with all the right enchantments. At least I think so. I guess we’ll find out.”

Filius nodded. “You said earlier that this would help us with more than the cloak. What did you mean?”

“If this doesn’t blow up in a lot of bad ways, then we know that I haven’t totally forgotten everything I learned in class. So we could use the basics of blue science to up the power on any rituals that we need to perform to do the switch again. And it looks like we’re going to need a lot of power to do it right.”

“I remember that. The process was mostly random but we’re trying to find a very specific world this time.”

Filius made a quiet hmm noise to himself. “How sure are you that the cloak is going to come here after all?”

“Pretty sure,” she answered. “The horcrux that’s here is lacing impressions in the cloak. He’s been doing it since after you first brought me here.” She paused, thoughtful. “Well, he’s not really giving impressions so much as he’s making them. He’s just letting the cloak know, as if the cloak’s put the pieces together on its own, that there’s a horcrux here. A housebound, presumably defenseless horcrux.”

“How is he doing that?”

It started as a chuckle but grew and grew till it became a manic, roaring laughter. “I’m a common link. Or this body is.”

“What do you mean?”

“The scar, Filius. This damned scar. You know that it’s got Voldemort’s magic all through it. Well, that connection can make a couple of jumps. If I’m connected to Voldemort, and he to me, then it stood to reason that he was connected to himself through me. And reason’s been well proven. I’m well and truly a web between the horcruxes.”

Filius stared at her. “You shouldn’t have done that. We could have found some other…” He shook his head. “I should have asked you from the beginning. I’m too used to your counterpart.“

Harry smiled. “Don’t worry, I would have lied. It’s not your fault. Besides, if me being here is any indication, you probably shouldn’t have let him work on his own so much either.”

* * *

 

_April 21 st, 1997_

It sickened her.

Harry opened herself up to the hollow house. She could feel it insinuate itself, seeping into her like water and mold in an old wall. She could not look back, as it looked to her. She couldn’t bear to. The shape of its mind as it was pressed against hers was so foreign, so familiar, so touched with the feeling of a nightmare that is disturbing precisely because everything that should be right is so wrong, and yet close enough to be almost, almost recognizable.

She imagined that this felt something like dying did.

But there was nothing to be done about it. This was the plan. This was the course of destruction, the path down to Hell to slay the beast and its triple heads.

All onward for the glory of Britannia, Pax Britannica.

“For I will be a Knight of Merlin’s Order,” she whispered to herself. “In my right hand the grail of life, succor for the mourning. And in my left hand the sword of destruction, dawn to the dark.”

She had demanded that the defense of the house be left to her alone. She was the only one who held the advantage. Anyone else was a liability.

But alone?

The dust, as it swirled or shifted with every unseen step.

The hesitant sound of a floorboard creaking.

Breathing, soft and measured, nearly impossible to hear.

A hundred scattered clues to its every movement, taken in and processed by a being that knew this thing as it knew itself. For they had been one, after all.

And this the hollow house gave to Harry, speaking to and perhaps acting through her. And still it was only barely enough.

The cloak realized that it had been a trap. Knew it but could only press on. The only way was _through_. The doors were barred, the walls and windows enchanted to be tougher than Damascus steel beside soapstone.

Curses were volleyed back and forth, colors and blasts from and into empty space. The cloak must have spun and woven through each room like an acrobat so quickly did it seem to move from one position to another. But it had been boxed in.

Lightning crackled from the wires and the lights. Her wand and stun baton, touching at the walls and tracing symbols wherever she moved, trailed bolts of white and green that flickered and shivered. Where the cloak touched ground, it shuddered. Where it moved, the interaction of electricity and magic interacted, giving tell tale traces that the hollow house could read.

Shadows swarmed from dark corners and furniture was animated by Harry, by the cloak, by the hollow house itself, to attack their master’s foe. When her body grew tired, she pushed it forward with the power of the house, the will of the horcrux and electricity and magic all woven together to keep her on her feet.

Still, it would never been defeated as the situation was. Stalemate. One of them would fall from exhaustion first and between her youth and its possessed body it would be a gamble as to which of them would fall first.

Only one other option. One way for it to win after all. It was Harry herself that stood between the cloak and the house. Harry, and then the cloak could work at its leisure.

She saw a head and half a body appear to her left. Its face was covered with blood. Its nose and an ear were missing, and scars crisscrossed its body, which the bore the signs of prolonged starvation. The horcrux evidently hadn’t taken too much care with its host body.

In the space of time it took for her to react it had unleashed some unknown spell on its body and thrown itself, its true self, the cloak-self, in her direction. She froze, and the cloak fell over her eyes.

The world was in shadows.

The world was in fire.

A fire.

She could see the screams

Blood over her eyes

The darkness like a wolf

Into a likeness not like unto the moon

Fingers stapling pine nuts into everything they touched

Falling like fixtures within a railway through a thousand bearded clouds entering through while seven exited and thanked the ground…

…your blossoming feet be never thus engaged…

…your entrance ever segues to endless lands dis-integrating….

(the eloquence of motion the grand summation of a passing lyre)

Fingering sublimating a taste as memorable as marrow and honey

Your blood hands and hair it might not be you but it would be enough

Glowing like split rotting livers in the sun

Glowing

Glowing

_In the sun_

She was so cold. Suddenly, so cold (sold mold bold hold).

“I am… a knight…” she whispered. (light right fight)

“Harriett Petunia Potter.” (rotter slaughter)

“I am myself.”  (shelf)

“Myself, and no other.”

She looked at where the cloak now lay. Empty. Powerless. Soulless.

For it hadn’t been the only soul in touch with her. No, and the cloak was a weak soul. It was barely one at all, so small it was. Small and impotent. The hollow house would scarcely notice the intrusion of that quivering splinter on its lorn and hungering mind.

As the hollow house withdrew from her, Harry could feel its pleasure.

“You are closer to us than you realize,” she heard it whisper.

 

The cloak burned like kindling.


	12. Warmaker & Silly Apprentices

_April 20 th, 1997_

They had only been back at Hogwarts for a little while before they traveled to the Pilazzo Reale at Milan again. In that time Harry and Riddle had run a few interesting experiments to get the scope of the problem that they were working with and Riddle had correlated a few notes to nail down a possible course of attack.

But all of that was for another time.

“Your Grace,” Riddle said, addressing the Emperor, “the burning time has come.”

Riddle was dangling a glass of wine from his fingers, gloved now that the curse had spread past his sleeves. He hadn’t drunk from the glass once and, choosing to err on the side of caution, Harry had followed his example.

Harry didn’t know if he had the stomach for wine anyway. He certainly didn’t back home.

Instead he looked around the room. It appeared to be more a party than a war council. Perhaps it was. There were most of the people that he recognized from his first visit to the Palazzo, but there were many more besides and Riddle had waited to bring up the topic until they had found a quiet place to talk.

Under other circumstances, a silencio would have been in order, but wands were no longer permitted in the Emperor’s presence.

“I have dropped information for our agents on the other side of the border, as protocol demands. They are ready.”

“You’re not only talking about replying to Behemoth, though,” the Emperor said. “I appreciate your desire to see Behemoth crushed. I remember the Imperial Father well, and it pains me to see his legacy shattered into pieces, but against that I must weigh the cost. What you propose could turn this into a world war.”

Ziz wasn’t unified like the other two fragments were, Harry remembered. Some of its pieces were no bigger than city-states, and they were held together in an uneasy amicability born more out of not being Behemoth or Leviathan and having no desire to change that, than out of shared heritage or leadership. Its so-called Senators sounded to Harry more like warlords, though, and to bring the war to any one of them might set the others like sharks in bloodied water.

“With all due respect, Your Grace, there is more to this than I have said to you already.” Riddle looked around the room and dropped his voice even lower. “If you would?”

With a jab of his wand silence fell around them. Harry could neither hear them nor see their lips move, but he could see the Emperor’s face turn somber and ashen.

“Not even the House of Windsor?” he heard the Emperor ask after the field went down.

“Her Majesty is wise, but she is a Muggle. Occlumency can only go so far.”

“Another reason to make a transition of power,” the Emperor murmured.

“All in good time, my Emperor.”

* * *

 

_April 21 st, 1997_

Harry set his pen down. “Tonks…”

“Eh?”

“Why do you work for Riddle?”

Tonks snorted. “I gotta say, it’s weird hearing that come out of the mouth it is.”

“You aren’t answering my question.”

She leaned back in her chair and balanced by propping her legs up on the table. “He’s… He’s the Headmaster. He’s _our_ Headmaster. Mine and Harry’s and… He’s never done wrong by us.”

“But _why_?” Harry looked down at the parchment in front of him as if the equations might hold the answer. “I mean…” He sighed. “Did he tell you about his counterpart where I come from?”

“A bit, he did. He said it was bad.”

“Dark lord.”

“Shite.”

“And it’s so strange, because I can… I can see parts of that in him. And there are these other parts that are missing. I can…” He shook his head. “He was a berserker when he was on the battlefield. He loved the killing, I’m certain of it. But I’m just as certain that he had the fear of Merlin put into him when I was almost hit by the curse he’s got on him now.”

“He isn’t nice,” Tonks said. “I think that you’re getting this a little mixed up.” She frowned. “I don’t think Harry knows. Mine, I mean. I don’t think she really gets it, and I haven’t told her yet. He’s like Slughorn on a diet and a chocolate fetish. He collects us. Anyone with talent. I’m a metamorphmagus, Harry’s got the prophecy, Mina Lima’s on retainer for whenever Riddle needs some linguistic work done. You get the picture.”

“For what? World domination? I mean, I can’t figure out what he’s after.”

Tonks snorted, then looked thoughtful. “You got Machiavelli in your universe, right?” After he nodded she continued. “You know that saying, about it being better to be feared than loved? I think the Headmaster decided it was the other way around.”

Harry considered this. “And what do you think?”

“He takes care of us. That’s why he likes Hufflepuff most of all. We can be smart for him like a Ravenclaw. We can be brave for him like a Gryffindor. We can be cunning for him like his own House. And where we can’t be quite as good as good as those houses, we can make up the difference with something else. Because we’re Hufflepuffs and the language that we speak isn’t arrogance or wit or plots or any of that stuff.

“You see, Harry,” she continued, “he does right by things. Ravenclaws give knowledge for knowledge. Gryffindors reward courage with courage. And Hufflepuffs return loyalty for loyalty.”

“But not friendship.”

“He doesn’t have friends,” Tonks said. “I think I’m the closest thing he’s got.”

That wasn’t what Harry had expected to hear.

“I call him Tom,” she explained. “Even the Gryffindors don’t have the courage to do that. We can go back and forth and he can pretend that there’s somebody on his level because I’m not in fear and I’m not in awe.”

“Only pretend?”

Tonks sighed. “I’m not on his level. It’s just that I don’t care.”

“And that isn’t good enough?”

“Not for him it isn’t. I can do what I do because he _lets_ me.”

Someone knocked on the door.

“You ain’t wanted,” Tonks said, but the door opened anyway.

“I never should have let you keep that boorish tongue of yours,” Riddle remarked.

“Hey, now how was I supposed to know it was you? How often do you knock? Come on, now. And me and Harry, we were having a serious heartfelt confession to each other. Undying love and everything, the works.”

“It must have been riveting,” Riddle said. “Harry, you’re not allowed to sleep with her until you can do it in your own body. This one you’re in is off-limits.”

“Hey wait what?” Harry choked. “I-I already have a girlfriend.”

“Well damn, lead a girl along why don’t you?” Tonks’ eyes gleamed. Literally gleamed. The tricks of a metamorphmagus were never exhausted, it seemed. “I’ll just have to have a word with your… Who’s this again?”

“Ginny Weasley.”

“Well I don’t think we’ve got one a’ those here. Fresh out of ‘em. Anyway, sir, what were you wanting to get on about?”

Riddle offered a second to the silence before he spoke. “I’ve returned from Milan.”

“Well _yeah_. Should I have said _wotcher, Tom_ — you know, just really hammered in that I got it that you’re home again?”

He raised a hand and Tonks quieted immediately. “Harry,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Do you remember your promise to help me to secure the Elder Wand?”

Harry nodded.

“It is soon time to retrieve it. If you do not go, I will not hold you in violation of our agreement. But if you do go, I will expect you to follow my every order. You will go forward when I say it, retreat when I call for it, and stand your ground against every dark wizard if that is my command. You will not put your current body in any more danger than you have to. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“And are these terms acceptable?”

“Yes.”

“Then it is settled.” Riddle smiled, just barely, but enough to give a hint of what Harry had seen in Belgium. “We are going to war.”

“I’ll send the invitations,” Tonks offered.


	13. The Girl Who Made Discoveries

_April 22 nd, 1997_

It hit her hard.

It was arguably obvious in retrospect, but it hit her hard all the same.

“Headmaster…”

The necropolis at Hogwarts was ancient tradition. And perhaps a small misnomer. It was not quite so much at Hogwarts as it was _very near_ Hogwarts.

Here was where Severus Snape lay. Where Dumbledore lay, now that his body had been recovered and rid of its horcrux.

Not every headmaster had been buried here. Certainly not every professor, although Harry took some amusement in noticing Binns’ tombstone.

Here she sat, between Snape and some professor she had never heard of. Among the dead. Feeling quite dead herself.

“Headmaster…” she muttered again.

Ginny came from behind and sat beside her in the grass.

“Hey.”

“And?” Harry questioned. The other girl hadn’t come by just to utter monosyllables.

“Flitwick told me… you kind of flipped out.”

And there it was.

Harry let a finger move lazily across the dirt, almost as if she were drawing something. “Maybe.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I’ll get your boyfriend back. Don’t worry about it.”

“That’s not why I’m here and you know it. You’re my friend too.”

“Short-lived friendship we’ll have then.”

Harry felt an arm encircle her.

“Let me in. Flitwick wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. But you should really talk to someone about it.”

Harry turned full away from Ginny, almost— but not quite— twisting her body out of Ginny’s half-hug. “My headmaster’s Voldemort.”

“But… he’s not _really_.”

“He may as well be! And he is! He fucking _is_ , or near enough!” Harry screamed. “We’re… _connected_ somehow. Your Harry and mine. I don’t know how it makes any sense. We have separate souls. We’re just… fumbling around in the dark and trying to find the backdoor out of this and we don’t know a _thing_ , but there’s something that— that binds us together. We’re the _same_ somehow, and so are… and so are Voldemort and Headmaster Riddle.”

Her eyes were wet. They had been wet for a long time.

Knights should not betray weakness.

“It’s like waking up and finding out that your friend was Wolf Shakesheave all along. Oh God… And I…. And I…”

“I thought you knew. I just assumed.”

“And the others wanted to stave it off. I just…. I just thought maybe the Headmaster hadn’t been born here. If another me could be a boy, why did Merope _have_ to love a… a muggle? Or he was dead. I didn’t realize the horcrux had used his _own_ house.”

With Ginny’s arms around her Harry felt like she was being crushed, but the feeling... the _feeling_ was not suffocating.

She closed her eyes.

“And there’s got to be some universe where that Shakespeare guy is… nice? Right? Maybe like William Shakespeare. That’s… not who you’re talking about to begin with, is it? Because he’s a nice bloke in this world.”

“Shakesheave was responsible for enacting genocide in the Prodigal States back in the Seventies. Nineteen-Seventies.”

“Not Shakespeare.”

“Not Shakespeare,” Harry agreed.

“But anyway, look at you,” Ginny resumed. “You’re a girl. The Harry from this world is a boy. But you’ve got the same name. The same parents. Same birthday. We know some of the same people. But our histories diverged before your parents were born. _They_ shouldn’t even be alive. How… How _unlikely_ is that?”

“Very.”

“Then what _couldn’t_ happen?”

“What do you…” Harry trailed off but Ginny went on and said it anyway.

“ _Everything_ must be happening. Somewhere.”

“Everything,” Harry repeated.

“Everything.”

“Okay, we have to cut that out now.”

“ _Everything_ ,” Ginny said, smiling.

“No, really. Very, very seriously,” Harry said. There was a distant quality to her tone. “The initial switch was random, Ginny. We know exactly what your Harry did but we can’t repeat the experiment bit for bit like we thought at the beginning. It would just be another random switch. I’d be wandering until I died.” She paused. “And if every possibility really does exist somewhere, then there’d have to be some version of me that would literally wander for eternity.”

“That’s not good.”

“We needed some way to… wear down the barrier— so to speak— and lock on to _your_ Harry in _my_ body. A signal to pierce through the noise of the multiverse. We were going to have to waste a large amount of energy for that. A very large amount. That’s where blue science was going to come in. And the Rid— the horcrux house. There’s something weird about horcruxes. Well, souls. Hence, horcruxes.”

“And you have that figured out?”

“Mostly.”

“Then where’s the problem?” Ginny asked.

“If _every possibility_ is realized, then there will be worlds where this _doesn’t_ work for one reason or another. In some of them we’re not even going to figure out how to make this work. Even if only _physically possible_ universes exist, all of this is physically possible. It’s _going_ to fail. Somewhere. Maybe here, but definitely somewhere.”

Harry stood. “We need to figure out how to overturn the system. Maybe…” She frowned. “Maybe…”


	14. Dreams & Covering Fire

**Chapter fourteen: Dream & Covering Fire**

_April 28 th, 1997_

“Another dream?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Did I have a starring role?”

“Shut up, Tonks.”

Unusually, Tonks actually listened and Harry was able to finish getting dressed in silence. It was… a little strange, perhaps, that she still hung around and carried on conversations when he was between outfits, as it were, but in her words it was “against my policy” to look without consent. And it wasn’t his body, not really, so he was in the clear.

Harry had noted, when she’d made mention of it a few days ago, that her only reason against it was “policy.”

Riddle was simply… amused. Harry found it somewhat comforting that a strong sense of schadenfreude was thus far proving to be a universal constant among Riddles.

In other ways, however, Riddle was ever an enigma.

How had he become… _whatever this was_ , that he was? Able to inspire such loyalty even in Tonks, who hated to be serious in the face of death but nevertheless could read people even without legilimency? Catching the little things was important when she might have to become anyone, at any time, and flawlessly imitate them herself.

Riddle wasn’t a saint. Certainly not. Harry remembered how he looked after they left Lockhart’s house. But he wasn’t Voldemort either.

Harry was still mulling it over in a part of his mind when they boarded the plane.

The plane.

It was a miracle of blue science. Or an everyday thing. A miracle only to Harry, alien as he was to the whole thing. Bigger within than without, faster than it should be, running on fuel equal parts gasoline and some alchemical concoction worked out by some of the greatest minds in Britain, near-weightless, and in possession of a sensory array that picked out everything from body heat to the occurrence of apparition.

And even as they flew to war, Harry and Riddle continued to discuss blue science and, more importantly, the trouble of getting Harry and Harry where they belonged. They worked at fine-tuning calculations for hours.

“And your dream?” Riddle asked at one point. “What did you see this time?”

“They’re working on a signal that we should be able to lock onto.”

“If we didn’t know to lock onto the signal, what would happen?”

“They may not be able to secure the connection. But… They’re expecting that we will. That one of me will. I don’t know if they were expecting the dreams but it wasn’t impossible for us to work out that there _would_ be a signal.”

“So of course we _would_. Or one set of us would.”

“Right.”

Finally a call came from the front. “Four minutes.”

Riddle stood and checked his jump-pack. “We’ll have to move as quickly as we can. The Eternal Kaiser is making a move on the city personally.”

“How did he—”

“Gilderoy’s death saved him from the pain of interrogation, not the questioning. The Hallow that is in the Eternal Kaiser’s possession makes such troubles as death a trivial concern. But of course the Kaiser must wait until we move first, in order to claim that he is only coming to protect the city.”

Riddle paused at the doorway.

“Mister Potter, before we jump... I would like to tell you that you have held yourself well. Your caliber is close to that of this world’s Harry.”

“She’s your measuring stick?”

“Harry has proven worthy of the trust and the effort that I have invested in her. As have you.”

It wasn’t even a twisted compliment. Harry just thought that it was a very odd way of putting things. And yet, it was maybe a lot clearer than a simple “Good job.”

_Worthy of the trust and the effort that I have invested in her._

“Time to go,” Riddle said, and Harry was torn out of his thoughts in time to see the man fall backwards, grinning like a monster, falling into the city.

The city that was a maelstrom. It was aflame. It was afire. It was a fire.

Harry followed. Into free fall. Into holocaust.

(And the fire would consume it all)

The bombs dropped all around them. Or descended.

And they unleashed. Were unleashed.

Napalm B. Burn salve “antidote.” Triethylaluminium. Greek Fire. White phosphorus. A “tracer charm” that kept the fire from interacting people wearing the proper suits.

And curses by the dozen, sowed in the potions and the metal of the bombs and left to fester and warp as only curses can.

(And the fire would consume it all)

It was night.

It blazed like the dawn.

And then they landed, Riddle and Harry and those that had gone with them.

Harry could see the field extending out.

(The city was a fire)

The charms fell away like water, but others remained, embedded in the flowing-carapace suit he was wearing, like the ones that he had seen in Belgium. It almost moved of its own accord, nudging him gently in his thoughts as it surveyed and analyzed the battlefield almost faster than he could react to its reports.

He was given ten seconds by the clock to recover from his landing. Then they were off. Running through the streets to their destination, past the anti-air defenses in that part of the city.

(And Riddle slew them down like Death’s lover or Death itself, with gun and wand he slew them, all which stood in their way)

There was dying in the streets, ashes and bones and blood across the asphalt and splattered on the walls. Harry wielded his wand as much as any of them, felling them with pure magic and conjured weapons upon a transmuting— and transmuting— battlefield.

(This was the shape of war)

And like the worst of dreams there came a time when Harry seemed to have woken up at all long last. Woken up in the very dream in which he had been held.

(Dreaming of dreaming, falling into the Fall)

There was still the war all around him. The city all around him. The fire.

But before them, the tower where their target hid. The Senator of this city and the land thereabouts.

Tonks’ crew soon met them there, and then as one they turned up their heads.

“He’ll be at the top, of course,” Tonks said.

“Yes. And who knows how many floors are really in here?” Riddle replied. “No-one goes entirely out of sight. We don’t need anyone disappearing.” He turned his attention fully to Harry. “It’s up to you to take the deciding blow against the Senator. Kill him or disarm him, it’s all the same.”

“What?”

“Whoever defeats the Senator becomes master of the Elder Wand,” Riddle said slowly. “And where are you going, very soon?”

“Home.”

“Where no-one will suspect a thing.”

“You’re going to permanently break the cycle,” Harry said.

Riddle’s grin was invisible behind the wall of his suit, but Harry could hear it in his voice.

“And you didn’t even need to use legilimency to read my mind.”  


	15. The Girl Who Faced Demons

**Chapter fifteen: The Girl Who Faced Demons**

_April 28 th, 1997_

_“Mister Potter, before we jump... I would like to tell you that you have held yourself well. Your caliber is close to that of this world’s Harry.”_

*Crack*

_“She’s your measuring stick?”_

*Crack*

_“Harry has proven worthy of the trust and the effort that I have invested in her.”_

*Crack*

* * *

 

The dreaming, in itself, as a process, was nothing new. She had dreamed of her world other times since they had begun putting theory to practice and laying the work to reverse the swap.

But that dream in particular.

That scene.

The Headmaster couldn’t have known that she would see it.

_“Harry has proven worthy of the trust and the effort that I have invested in her.”_

“I am a Knight of Merlin’s Order,” she whispered to herself.

Untrue, but at that moment she fancied that she could feel the future as if it were beside her.

She turned her attention back to Flitwick. “What if there’s space in the multiverse?” Harry asked. “Or some context of relationships in which there’s something similar. If there are universes branching off this one at this very moment, we could say that they’re closer than any universes that branched fifty years ago.”

“And you’ve figured out a way to make use of this? Flitwick asked. “Do you think that the distance, such as it were, will cause problems for us?”

“No, but I’m thinking. I’m thinking.” She tapped a quill against the parchment diagrams between them. “We’ve still got our first problem anyway. We’ve got to find a way to locate one particular Harry out of all the possible Harrys that are out there.”

“First problem? What are all the others? I thought that we solved the energy issue.”

“Never mind. I’m working on it.”

Tell him? Keep it secret? What did it matter when there were other universes in which she was doing either? But this instance of her wouldn’t let him know. This instance of him, at least, wouldn’t know that there would be failures out there.

Unless Harry figured out a solution. She would just have to feed the problems to him without letting him know what they really were.

He was a Ravenclaw in this world. Ravenclaws investigated problems just to sate their curiosity, right?

“So what do you have so far?” he asked her.

“Souls matter. Somehow. I’m Harry, he’s Harry, we’re both Harry, but we have different souls. Enough that the horcruxes have been able to tell the difference between us.”

“I see.”

Flitwick did not look pleased.

“Now, there’s something else, too. Your Harry had a horcrux. This scar,” she said, pointing. “But it’s not here anymore.”

“No?” Flitwick’s eyes widened. “We didn’t ask… There were traces of magic around it still but that could have been a residual effect. It _is_ a residual effect, I suppose I should say. But we didn’t want to alarm you.”

“Our friend in the hollow house let me know that something was missing in this skull.”

“And you feel that this will be useful to us?”

She did not look back at the hollow house. She did not look at the horcrux therein. The horcrux that was waiting. “Yes.”

The next part would be the hardest of all.

 _Let me be a sword in the service of Britain_ , she thought to herself, _that I might cut through that which must be done and not be bent._

* * *

 

She didn’t tell them the truth. Only that it needed to be done.

Which was the truth, perhaps. But she had made implications, and conclusions had been drawn.

And perhaps it wasn’t entirely true. It was probably a good idea, really, to get rid of this last horcrux.

“YoU ThInK I DoN’t KnOw WhY yOuV’e CoMe.”

In a field of bones.

But there had to be no witnesses.

“YoU tHiNk I dOn’T kNoW wHaT dEaLs YoU’vE mAdE.”

No. Not a field. A garden.

Spines stood rooted, rising out of the ground. Unfurled, ribs outstretched like spreading petals. Jaws open in deadly agony.

Behind her, an open path blown through the bone-rows, wreckage from their battle. There were bones burning around them. Inferi moaning, and others trying to, but not intact enough to do so. Those scraped the ground with their fingers or clacked their teeth, trying in vain to bite at her, at him, at anything.

“BuT tHiS wAs A pLaCe ThAt YoU cOuLdN’t HaVe FoUnD oN yOuR oWn.”

“Shut up,” she snarled.

He obliged, but only because the wound in his mouth had healed shut and his body was too broken for him to cut it open again.

A disembodied arm crawled across the field, between them.

“What deals I’ve made are none of your business.”

His face moved, bones readjusting, trying to display his pleasure through a face that only barely resembled humanity.

“You’re not my Headmaster.”

She leveled her wand.

“Incendio.”

“ _Incendio_.”

A blaze.

“INCENDIO!”

She didn’t stop until the homunculus had been reduced to ashes. Then she put out the flames with a wave of her wand and, with another, carefully lifted the horcrux and deposited it into a small but very heavy box. 


	16. War & Cheap Death

_April 28 th, 1997_

The Senator’s wizards tried to hold the door. Again and again, they tried to hold the door.

Under Riddle’s direction, the squad barreled through each line like a juggernaut. Room to room, they slew, fell, eviscerated, and demolished everyone that stood in their way.

The difference between the cutting edge and yesterday’s news was wide enough in the days of old Muggle tech. These were some of the Senator’s best men and women, and Riddle’s soldiers were cutting them down like scythes in an amber-ripe field.

They advanced methodically. Each level was cleared out before they went to the next, the squad dissolving into fire teams as necessary to plug up escape routes. No one was allowed to get out.

Harry wasn’t sick from exhaustion. He wasn’t sick from the pain of his wounds. He wasn’t sick from anything he had expected to be made sick by, because none of it had happened. He wasn’t exerting himself enough to be tired. He’d been cut exactly once. There were no curses to malign him.

He was sick, but it was from the smell that got past the suit’s filters. From the feeling of crushed bones and liquefied meat beneath his feet. The way that Riddle issued orders as if he were conducting an orchestra. How Tonks said _nothing_ , neither a witty comment to show either that she was enjoying this as much as Riddle or that she was grasping at straws to break the tension and distract herself or… or _something_.

Instead it was a silence that told him how little she cared either way. It was nothing to make jokes about. It was nothing to be horrified by. It simply was, and tomorrow she would be back to cracking jokes and making little innuendos and _how many people had she killed like this already?_

Harry didn’t know how he felt about that. Maybe it was naïve or childish or idealistic of him to be like this. But these people weren’t monsters. They only served an administration that Harry wasn’t sure was worse than Leviathan or Britain. He hadn’t lived here, hadn’t learned enough about the policies of this state, to compare to his also-limited experience in Britain. And she killed them with a flick of her wrist and it wasn’t going to affect her.

And they pressed on, floor by floor. Methodically but not slowly. Swiftly, but not without thoroughness. The worst thing that could happen would be for the Senator to kill himself, Riddle had mentioned. That would break the cycle, but not in a way that they wanted. Rid this world of the Elder Wand and make Harry its master so that he could wield it against Voldemort.

Riddle seemed keenly furious with his other self. Harry’s struggle in his own world had become personal to Riddle, like Voldemort was a putrefying disease on the world.

But they didn’t have cause to worry, Riddle had said. “Only cowards seek the Elder Wand. A brave wizard would kill and become its master with one wave of his wand, and kill himself with a second. The Elder Wand only exists because of cowards and fools that are too afraid of dying.”

“Then am I supposed to kill myself after?”

“Break the wand or break yourself. But wizards have failed to do even the first.”

Harry’s boots squished as they reached the top floor. Their opposition fared no better here. Tables were overturned, shields erected, and Riddle’s squad brought walls down on top of them and sprayed poison gas and explosive jelly everywhere they went. Defensive charms were counteracted, dispelled, or outright broken through. Where full assaults wouldn’t work, indirect attacks were made.

Fiendfyre wrapping around legs and bodies, constricting and swallowing up their blackened corpses. Acid transfigured from the air that they were breathing.

They left the Senator alive.

“Harry, it’s your time to shine.”

“I…”

“P-Please, don’t kill me,” the Senator pleaded. He dropped to his knees. “I— This is my wand, isn’t it? Take it, it’s yours. You’ve won. Please.”

Harry swallowed.

He just had to beat the Senator, right? Killing wasn’t necessary. Just this one man, but at least someone didn’t have to die.

How many other people were dying today?

“Stupefy.”

The Senator’s body hit the floor. There was a squelch, and more as Harry knelt down to retrieve the Elder Wand.  It was slick with a kaleidoscope of red mush, sticky and flecked with fragments of bone, concrete, and other things.

“Hm,” was all that Riddle said.

“Disappointed?”

“You made your choice. It remains to be seen what will become of the Senator. However, I do hope you didn’t think you spared him much. We’re done here. Move out,” he ordered. With a gesture of his wand he levitated the Senator’s body and floated it in front of him before departing.

“Harry,” Tonks said. “We’ve got to go. Retrieval is coming down on the roof and they can’t wait for us forever.”

Harry turned the Elder Wand over in his hands, then nodded and followed after Tonks.


	17. Interlude: The Children & Their Meeting

_April 29 th, 1997_

“Ah.”

“Indeed. Ah.”

“And you’re Harry?”

“Well, so are you.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. Well, I think I’m real. Maybe you’re the dream.”

“And I think that I’m real.”

“Let’s give each other the benefit of the doubt then.”

“I can agree to that.”

“Were you expecting this?”

“Not really. But I suppose that it isn’t outside the realm of possibility. Are we all good on your end?”

“Ready when you are. Do you think that it’ll work? The Field?”

“We probably won’t ever find out for sure. We’ll always have to worry about confirmation bias.”

“Well if we can… What if we could communicate? After the switch back.”

“That might be dangerous. What if we switched all over again?”

“We know what happened this time, don’t we?”

“I suppose so. I still don’t know if it’s possible, though. And as it is, we’re in the middle of a chain reaction right now. I don’t know if we could do… this, and prevent a switch in the end.”

“Well let’s try to do it, at least.”

“Sure. Oh, um…”

“Yes?”

“Well… I’m not a genius, but I can read between the lines. And I can make assumptions. It would be easy to wonder. Only sane to wonder, I would think.”

“Huh?”

“You aren’t just a tool to him. I want to make sure that you know that. Because I would have doubts. I did have doubts.”

“…”

“Harry?”

“Thank you.”


	18. The Girl Who Said Farewell

_April 30 th, 1997_

“And what does the future have in store next for the visitor from another world?” questioned the horcrux.

“That depends,” Harry said softly. She sat in one of the higher rooms, where Riddle’s bedroom was in her world. Against the wall and on the floor, but she didn’t pay it much attention.

“Do you worry that something will go wrong?”

“Of course.”

“So is that why you have not said goodbye to them?”

“Do you think that it will work?”

She couldn’t see the horcrux, but she felt as though it nodded to her. “The theory is sound.” It paused. “It is plausible. It is possible. Therefore, it will happen. Do not panic.”

The idea was that souls were important. Souls were distinct, even where they were doubles. Harry and Harry were Harry, but they were not totally identical. She had seemed strange and subtly out of place to the horcruxes, because her soul was not exactly the same as the Harry from this world. And if there was a difference between them then there should be some difference between any two Harrys that were distinct enough in their histories for it to matter.

The idea was that souls in a universe could be affected by a force outside their universe. She was living proof of that.

“So we’re gaming the universe, then,” she had asked Flitwick after he explained his thought process.

“I don’t follow you.”

“Like… We’re breaking all the rules that aren’t there. The ones that would make sense to be there, but they’re not, and if this were a game of Pass the Dragon then the bouncers would be escorting us out just for thinking about pulling a stunt like this.”

“Then that is exactly what we are doing, Harry.”

“We’re going to need even more power than I thought.”

They were going to have to touch the cosmos with a comb so fine-toothed it would look like a solid sheet. But it could work, just possibly.

“What if universes are distinct from each other in ways as minute as souls are?”

It had begun to look that way.

“What if there was a correlation between the differences between universes and those between souls?”

It just might be possible.

“What if we could knock out the two of you and you would just… gravitate to where they belonged? Like magnetism and staves and… things.”

“Poles, you mean. Magnetic poles, not staves.”

Flitwick wasn’t the world’s authority on magnetism. But that wasn’t the best part anyway. That wasn’t what was going to get them kicked out of the Pan-Universe Gaming Hall. Not quite.

“What if,” she had asked in turn, “what if we could do that _everywhere_ in our metaphorical bubble of multiverse space?”

The idea was that it didn’t matter if they failed _here_. They were going _big_. The Field was going to hit every displaced Harry and Harry. It didn’t matter if it didn’t happen here because, if all genuine possibilities would be realized, then so long as it could actually happen somewhere it _would_. Some Harry out there would make the Field work and everyone would go home.

“Except the ones whose doubles died,” Ginny noted after she learned what was being planned.

“That’s… probably not very likely.”

“”But it’ll still happen somewhere. Would there just not be a switch, or would they maybe be sent back and be dead and not have a body?”

“So far, your Harry is still alive.”

“But there will be Ginnys out there whose Harry won’t be coming back. Can’t I be a sad for them?”

But Harry was still a tiny bit afraid that something would go wrong. Or perhaps she was afraid of what she might be leaving behind.

“Our deal,” the horcrux reminded her. “The payment for my cooperation.”

Harry nodded and set the box down on the floor. It opened before her eyes, as if being touched by invisible hands. The eye was there, the eye that was a horcrux.

“You think you can handle that thing?”

“I will break the soul fragment into smaller pieces and eat them over time, long enough that I can retain my sense of self and not be swallowed up in turn.”

“Alright then. Have fun. Don’t… Don’t kill anybody.”

“You should go,” the horcrux said. “It’s almost time for you to make the switch.”

Harry didn’t look back.

This was the other Harry’s problem now.


	19. Chocolate & Loose Ends

_April 30 th, 1997_

“All weapons must be passed over before audience is granted with the Emperor, Headmaster Riddle.”

“I know that,” Riddle replied, handing over his wand. Harry did likewise.

They passed through several doors and many more charms before finally reaching the Emperor.

“Leave us,” Riddle said to the attendant that had followed them through.

“But you—”

“Listen to what he says,” the Emperor ordered.

Without further protest the attendant departed, closing the doors behind him.

The Emperor placed the palms of his hands together and rested them on the great desk in front of him. “Did you secure the Deathstick?”

“Regrettably no,” Riddle lied as he and Harry took their seats. “But it was destroyed, which we perhaps may count in our favor.”

A frown spread across the Emperor’s face. “Then the tokens of Grindelwald’s reign are no longer whole.”

“Let us make hot chocolate as we discuss,” Riddle suggested.  

“Really now. I know you have a slight obsession, but the temperature is perfectly fine.”

“It will relax us all. And I know that you appreciate a good cup as well.”

“Very well.” The Emperor took out his wand and gave it a few waves. Mugs and various ingredients appeared in front of them, which Riddle took in order to prepare their drinks.

“Nutmeg, a dash of ginseng, surprise me on the chocolate,” the Emperor said. He smirked.

They talked as Riddle worked, and the focus of the conversation was quickly turned from Riddle to Harry. Out of the corner of his eye, though, as the Emperor was turned fully to Harry, he noticed Riddle discreetly scratch a blackening finger over one of the cups. It nearly stopped Harry in the middle of his talking, but the Emperor didn’t seem to notice the hiccup.

Nothing unusual happened for most of the meeting. After the Emperor had been sufficiently consoled about the Elder Wand they moved on to more general war reports. Leviathan was preparing to counter-invade Behemoth, and disunity was growing in the states of Ziz. Other countries were still watching to see whether and where to throw their weight, but it would be always anyone’s game until the last spell had been cast.

At the end, however, as he was shaking their hands and thanking them for coming, the Emperor did give a slight cough. Perhaps it had been nothing. But it did weigh on Harry’s mind, and he brought it up to Riddle when they returned to Riddle’s office.

“Did you do something to the Emperor? I saw you do something to your hand.”

“Hot chocolate, Harry?”

“No thanks.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Did you poison him?”

Riddle stirred his hot chocolate for a little bit before he said anything. “Everyone thinks that the hot chocolate is special in some way. They think that I’ve done something to it. Truth serum, elixirs to bend them to their will, terrible poisons. Everyone except for the very young. That my room is intentionally cold only heightens their suspicion. But that isn’t the truth at all, and they find that out as soon as they run through every diagnostic spell in their repertoire. But do you know where their undoing comes in?”

If this was the game that Riddle was going to play… Harry sighed. “Where?”

“They never suspect that the hot chocolate itself could have an effect.” Riddle smiled and drank from his mug. “Chocolate has a chemical effect all on its own, and that is heightened when it is warming you. They feel better, happier, and it does not take much to get them to associate that with me if this suits my purposes. And the chocolate, as I told the Emperor, relaxes a mind and puts it at peace. This is why we use it to counteract dementors after all.”

“So you didn’t do anything.” Riddle must have just been… itchy. And Harry was suspecting him of foul play because he still couldn’t separate Riddle from Voldemort in his mind.

“Oh no, I poisoned him.”

What. 

“This curse that was inflicted upon me,” Riddle continued, “has turned out to be quite serendipitous. It embeds itself in the flesh— that is, it is not I that am cursed, but this blackening flesh, and the curse is merely spreading. And I had a true excuse for why I possessed it. But the biggest problem I suppose is that the Emperor’s security was lax. They saw the curse. Perhaps they were less imaginative than I or simply didn’t understand its nature. But ultimately they trust me, as the Emperor does, and all that they did in taking our wands was the bare minimum expected of them by protocol.”

“So you’re both going to die.”

Riddle shook his head. “It seems curable, and if worst comes to worst then I shall simply divest myself of a limb. But the Emperor will not know what ails him, and it will be ensured that he is given the _correct_ medical attention. By the time that symptoms appear it should be easy to give a misdiagnosis that looks correct to any to care to investigate.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“For Harry’s sake. She will inherit Grindelwald’s throne, and she shall do it by ascending to the seat at Milan.”

“But she isn’t even in line for the throne. Or am I missing something?”

“You’re clear enough right now. Do you remember Osvaldo Lazzara, the Duke-Governor?”

“Yes. I thought that he was the next in line. Are you planning on killing him too?”

Riddle laughed. “No. I need do nothing else at this point. Lazzara is a loyal man, honestly grateful to me for my aid and aware of what he owes me. He will make sure that the Emperor’s death goes as planned and no one is the wiser. Afterward, he will… To be frank, he will be my puppet. But that is not his true use. Harry will surely be a Knight of Merlin, and she will grow in influence from there. She is already positioning herself perfectly for the right moment.”

“To kill Lazzara herself?”

“Not at all. Others will do that. Lazzara is a loyal man, but he can barely handle his present position. I can make sure that the war goes smoothly and the country continues to function but he will dissatisfy many. At this very moment, the future coup is inevitable. It is written on the walls, even before Lazzara takes the throne. And when it happens, Harry will be the best and brightest choice for his replacement.”

“And then you’ll be the power behind Harry’s throne.”

“The dawn’s mean wane,” Riddle said. “The very last part of the prophecy. I have thought about that for a long time, wondering what it means. I am inclined to think that this means the world stands to get only better from here, so long as Harry sets it on the right course. I see no reason that I will not benefit from this. But must I be a miser that can only be satisfied when everyone else is not? Everyone wins when everyone is prosperous.

“But more,” Riddle added, “this is the proof of my power. It is I that will accomplish the purposes of fate and be the architect of whatever age Harry may be a herald of. It is I that will set Harry at Milan. It is I who can say ‘Ask whatever it is that you want, and it will be given you.’ And this is why I am strong, because I can, and I will, give anything to those that serve me.”

“I see.”

Riddle nodded. “There are ways in which I am not very far from your Voldemort, and some in which I am an entirely different shade of black. Let me ask you, if I may: Do you happen to know the name of the man that visited an orphanage many years ago, in order to introduce an eleven-year-old boy to the magical world?”

“Albus Dumbledore.”

“I had thought so. But here, in my world, he was forced to attend to another task. It had come up without warning, so quickly, and I began to think, as I wondered how our histories had diverged, that this had been such an unlikely occurrence. Perhaps that was where we parted ways. And now I see that I am right, and I know for the first time exactly how important first impressions may be.”

“Who went to visit you then?”

“Horace Slughorn. A gregarious man, a Slytherin like myself. And he saw something in me that day. It troubled him, but he looked within himself and he saw what could be done about it. He taught me that it is better to be loved than to be feared, and how much power I could wield thereby. I saw in Slughorn a model for myself, and when I most wanted to be vicious and sadistic, as I had been in my years before I took residence with Slughorn, I remembered the differences in power that were held by despots and by heroes. It was, really, those that were loved whose power was more secure. Perhaps if Dumbledore had encountered me the visit would not have gone so well. I could have hid myself from Slughorn, as I did from everyone here, and he would have seen only the mask.

“But if I cannot provide for the wishes of those that serve me,” he added after a moment’s pause, “then how powerful am I really? But I am content, I must say, to be the Headmaster of Hogwarts School, and to set my servants in high places, where they may be just as satisfied in themselves as I am in them.”


	20. Epilogue: The Girl Who Was Debriefed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to include some bits from Ravenharry's POV, but never really worked out... Sorry about that.

**Epilogue: The Girl Who Was Debriefed**

_April 30 th, 1997_

All without a hitch, as far as she could tell.

Home sweet home, and the Hogwarts and the world that she was familiar with.

The Headmaster had greeted her with a “Welcome back.”

Tonks, in the middle of crushing her ribcage, claimed this was a piss poor way of throwing a homecoming party (“I do _not_ recall claiming we would ever hold a party, Nymphadora”) and made some obscene gesture that Harry couldn’t quite see all of.

“We missed you,” Tonks said. “No small bit.”

“I’ll miss the other you, too,” she also said, with a smile that made Harry suddenly wonder, for just a moment, if she should have been worried by what had gone on in her absence.

But Tonks was just Tonks. And that was just fantastic.

And the Headmaster… was the Headmaster.

She took her hot chocolate in both hands. It spoke “Home” in a way that that nothing else did.

Hogwarts was Hogwarts, and its four walls were the same in the world she had left. Diagon Alley was there, if the shops were different. The grass was still green.

But it did not have this hot chocolate.

This hot chocolate, which the Headmaster himself created. There was no other cup like it, because this was his recipe.

“That other world is so deprived,” she murmured then.

She spent hours telling the Headmaster about the other world. Even so, she knew she wasn’t done. She had been there for a month. There was so much to know, even accidental details that she hadn’t consciously picked up. After the first round they would move on to the pensieve, and then legilimency.

It might be months before the Headmaster felt that they had found everything. In the meantime, though, she had a prophecy to think about.

 

_The last hope of the sea_

_To reunite the brothers three_

_And there rule long and justly reign,_

_A Gilead ‘gainst the dawn’s mean wane._

 

“And you’re sure that it’s me, of course,” she said, half to herself. “You wouldn’t tell me on the basis of a pretty good hunch. So what do _you_ think it means?”

“You are Grindelwald’s heir.”

“P-pardon?”

“Not by blood, of course. But if fate has conspired to set you as the first to rule the whole extent of the Empire since Grindelwald himself, what can you be but his heir? That pissant at Milan is hardly fit to keep your seat warm, and Vincenzo was no better.”

“Vincenzo… is dead then?”

Riddle nodded.

“Did you kill him?”

Riddle nodded again.

“Why?”

“Because it was expedient.”

Harry stared into her hot chocolate.

This was her headmaster.

It could not be said that he was untruthful. Or rather it could, but not with her. They had long ago reached the point where he could simply say “That will wait, Harry.”

He did not lie to her. Not anymore.

And he had told her what he had done. Frankly. Without elaboration. Expecting that she would trust in his judgment.

It was a hard thing, perhaps. It was also a little treasure.

“Then I _will_ be Empress-at-Milan,” she said, returning her gaze to him.

“Indeed. And not only— for you will be the _Empress_ , Harry. No qualifiers. Equal only to Grindelwald himself, and who is equaled by the dead? No, but you’ll call him up yourself to be interrogated, with the Stone that is your birthright. Once the Eternal Kaiser is gotten rid of.”

Riddle scowled. “Nevertheless, Osvaldo keeps the Cloak safe for us for the time being, not even knowing for whom he serves as custodian, or even that he serves so. And with your counterpart’s help we have secured the second Hallow.”

He flicked his wrist, and in his hand was the Elder Wand.

Harry leaned forward, staring with open eyes. Riddle drew back, smiling.

“I’m afraid that you can’t wield it, Harry. You are not its master. Nor is any other person in this world.”

“So the cycle of ownership has been broken.”

She sighed. She… wasn’t sure how she felt about that. But if the Headmaster thought it was the best course then she would trust his judgment.

“Hm… It would appear so, wouldn’t it? And we should certainly arrange for you to be defeated in some manner that will assure other Seekers that the mastery has passed on to another.” Riddle put a hand down on a few of the papers scattered on his desk and made a point of looking at them. When Harry followed his gaze she saw, half-buried beneath another sheet, diagrams much like those she had seen in the other Harry’s journal.

“I think that we can reverse the process _again_ , and reliably. Don’t you?”

Harry nodded.

“Then the cycle is not broken, only on hiatus. And it will be resumed as soon as its current master, _safe in another world_ , is brought back for a very, very short conversation.”

Riddle smiled.

“All glory be to Grindelwald’s Heir,” he said.

 _And there rule long and justly reign_ , she thought.

Would her rule be just?

Or simply justified?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And... that's a wrap! 
> 
> There is another sequel being plotted. It won't be out for awhile. Stuff you can definitely count on seeing roll out before the Unlikely sequel:   
> +An Invader Zim/Homestuck crossover  
> +The return of Rose Weasley from the India War  
> +And a peculiar HP fic with time travel shenanigans all over the place. That one, in fact, should be rolling out in a couple of weeks.


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